Beach Blanket Buff
by William Easley
Summary: A guy, a girl, a secluded beach with no one else around-oh, you just KNOW there's going to be Wendip. As the summer of 2015 winds to its end, Wendy and Dipper go to the beach where the Gobblewonker robot wound up back in 2012 for a little alone time. Wonder what adventure they'll have. I wonder...
1. Chapter 1

**Beach Blanket Buff**

 **(August 12-15, 2015)**

* * *

 **1: Mental Health Day**

On Wednesday afternoon, after the lunch rush had died down, a slightly frazzled Wendy had a question for Soos: "Hey, man, any way that I could have Saturday off?"

"Huh?" Soos, just back from a Mystery Tour, asked, straightening his red string tie while studying his reflection in the mirror. "Uh, dare I ask why?"

"Mental health day," Wendy said, leaning against the door frame. "Seriously, we been goin' non-stop ever since the first of July. The Shack's been crazy busy, and we had lots more junk to deal with, too. All that biz about Big Bad Brujo, then the bawdy bad brumas—time's running short before the Pines twins have to leave us, and I've been wanting to show Dip a few places before he and Mabel have to go back home. It'd be real nice if he and I could have Saturday off so's I could drive him around the Valley, we could have a picnic, and all. How about it?"

"Well," Soos said, adjusting his eyepatch, "of course, Saturday's bound to be busy with Woodstick and all, but on the other hand, we'll run the Shack on a shortened schedule so's we can park the RV over near the festival and sell merch there. Dude, we did awesome business last year! On the other hand, we'll need somebody here and also at the festival. On the other hand, Abuelita will take care of the kids all day, and Mr. Pines and Sheila will be workin' in the Shack. And we won't offer lunch service 'cause of the short hours, so Teek won't have to cook, so he and Mabel could help out some with me in the RV and go to Woodstick to hear some music after we close the mobile Shack at four. On the other hand—dude, I think I ran out of hands!"

"What's the verdict?" Wendy asked, stifling a yawn. "Yea or nay?"

Soos shrugged. "Umm. Sure, Wendy. But you and Dip _are_ goin' to Woodstick, aren't you?"

"Yeah, Saturday evening. I sorta got burned out on it last year, but there's some bands scheduled from four o'clock to midnight I'd love to catch. But Saturday morning I just want to have a picnic-and-drive-date with Dipper."

"You got it, Wendy," Soos said, aiming his forefinger and clicking his tongue. "Deal. You guys have fun."

"I can guarantee it," Wendy told him with a smile.

She immediately let Dipper know. He was working the register, but it was a pretty slow day for that summer, and they were managing with just the one gift-shop cash register open. Wendy said, "Good thing is, with everybody at Woodstick, the lake'll be practically deserted. We'll take Dad's boat out to the Falls and you can show me this mystical hidden beach."

"If we can even get through the waterfall," Dipper said. "I'm not real sure we can. The first time we did it, we just rammed Soos's boat through at top speed and beached it. Getting back out again was hard. About all we had left of the boat afterward was the hull and the engine. I mean, this is a lot heavier waterfall than Ghost Falls is, and there's not much overhang on either side."

"Aw, you'll figure out a way," Wendy said cheerfully. "I'm gonna wear my terrycloth beach cover-up, but under it—" she waggled her eyebrows. "Somethin' red, man!"

"I'm . . . not gonna have to wear that Speedo, am I?" Dipper asked. "I mean, I love you in your red bikini and all, but let's face it, tight swimwear doesn't do much for me. And besides, when we get, you know—friendly and all, it, uh, the Speedo sort of binds."

"Don't want you to get bound, man," Wendy said. Then, because a tourist was approaching with a deck of Gravity Falls monster cards, she whispered, "Unless you enjoy that kind of thing."

"Uh, no."

The lady put the pack of cards on the counter. "How much are these, young man?"

"Um, well, the deck is five dollars, tax included. There are fifty-two pictures of real Gravity Falls oddities, plus a bonus twelve cards with the most popular Mystery Shack attractions."

"I'll take it!" the lady said happily, rummaging in her purse for a five-dollar bill.

Dipper rang her up, and as she left with her bagged souvenir, Wendy punched his arm lightly. "How's about it? You got any interest in playing around with ropes and handcuffs and junk?"

"Not . . . this time," Dipper said. "But seriously, I don't want to wear the Speedo, just my regular old swimming trunks, if that's OK with you."

"Dipper," Wendy said, sounding serious, "that's fine with me. Heck, you don't even have to wear swim trunks to please me."

"Ah, uh, I—OK," Dipper said. They were alone in the gift shop at the moment, at least until Soos got back with the tram-load of tourists he was just taking on the Mystery Trail tour. Dipper laughed at himself for blushing. "Why do I get so embarrassed when you tease me? I mean, you and I—" he looked furtively around, but Teek's shift had ended, and he and Mabel were off somewhere, and Dipper whispered, "took a shower together!"

"Well, yeah, but remember, we were kinda celebrating not drowning," Wendy said. "It was more a thing of just enjoying being alive than of getting romantic. And let me tell you, I couldn't help noticing that you were _impressively_ glad to be alive!"

Dipper gave her a weak grin. "I guess this falls under the heading of 'Banter.' Uh, playful banter was number one on my list of how to ask you to dance with me."

" _Did_ we banter?" Wendy asked.

With a sheepish grin, Dipper said, "So here's a casual question: What's your favorite snack food?"

"Ohhh, _that_ was banter!" Wendy said. "And that was number one on your list?"

"Yep. Hey, I was only twelve."

"Number one should've been, 'Hey, Wendy, want to dance?'" she said.

He squeezed her hand. "I know that—now."

She gave him a quick peck of a kiss on his nose. "OK, seriously, we'll watch ourselves. We'll get snuggly if we want to, but we won't take anything off or cross the line, 'cept maybe mentally. I promise. That OK with you?"

"Oh, yeah," Dipper said. Their mental make-out sessions were very, let's say, _satisfying_ for both of them. Maybe not as much as going full-out physical would have been, but they had promised each other to wait for that kind of activity until Dipper turned eighteen—two years and two weeks to go.

But Wendy had already solemnly warned him that the moment he and Mabel blew out the eighteenth birthday candles, all bets were off.

Dipper had been increasingly regretting the fast approach of summer's end—his and Mabel's sixteenth birthday was August thirty-first, but that would also be their last day in Gravity Falls until the following June, unless they could talk their parents into letting them visit during Christmas break. Mom had already planned a big, gaudy Christmas celebration, really their first one in their new house, so that looked iffy.

The prospect of nine Wendy-less months was weighing down on Dipper. He looked forward to a whole day alone with her.

When they had time on Thursday and Friday, they discussed what to take—Wendy said she had a big yellow beach blanket with a Valentine heart pattern, and they'd need sunblock (more for the boat ride than the beach, since the beach was actually in a cavern behind Gravity Falls Falls, not dark, but shielded from full sun by the cascade of water), a picnic lunch, changes of clothes, this, that, and the other. And they couldn't forget some means of waterproofing, because lying on a soggy beach blanket in a shadowy cavern didn't sound like much fun.

They brainstormed ways, though, and were confident they could cope. As though to reassure Dipper, Wendy was the one who suggested a kind of schedule. Making lists and schedules was more his thing than hers.

But she said, "OK, write this one down. Saturday's our rest day from our run anyhow. Now, I say since we're not exercising, let's get an early start. First thing in the morning, we'll drive around the Valley, and I'll show you some spots we haven't visited. There's the Goofer Hole, and the steam springs—a bubbling mud pot, and a few kinda lame geysers—oh, and some cool overlooks with fantastic views, the Crystal Cave, and four or five other places I'd like you to see."

"Sounds great," Dipper said, jotting furiously with a chewed-up pen.

"Yeah, then in the middle of the day, we'll either have our picnic lunch and go out to the hidden beach 'round noon, or if we can get the food through the Falls and keep it dry, we might eat on the beach. Guess we'll decide that once we see how hard it's gonna be."

"How, uh, how hard—?"

"How hard to get to the beach through the waterfall," Wendy explained. "Get your mind out of the gutter, Dip!"

"No, that wasn't what I meant—you're teasing me again."

"Yep," Wendy agreed, wrinkling her nose. "OK, so I'll fix up a nice picnic lunch for us. What do you say about the time? What about setting out around seven in the morning? We can pick up some drive-through breakfast stuff and then head for the hills."

"Sounds good. I'll get dressed and everything and meet you down the driveway," Dipper said, clicking his pen. "Nobody else will be up at that hour, so I can slip off without Mabel deciding she and Teek want to tag along."

"They couldn't anyway, 'cause they're working the RV, starting at ten," Wendy said. "And Melody and Soos are relieving them at two, so they can go to Woodstick. Oh, speaking of the festival, did you remember to ask Stan—"

Dipper reached in his shirt pocket and produced two tickets. "Score!"

"Cool! He _gave_ you two tickets!"

Dipper admitted, "Uh—well, not exactly for free, but he let me have the twenty-five percent employees' discount. That's OK, I could afford it. These are VIP, though—he upgraded me at no extra charge, so we get seats close to the stage. When's, uh, when are Robbie and Tambry due back from California?"

"Saturday morning, and then the Tombstones are gonna debut their new album at seven Saturday night."

"It's all recorded and finished, then?" Dipper asked.

"That's why they've been in LA for two weeks, doing the final edits. MP3 version's ready. Gonna be a CD version, too, but that probably won't be finished and packaged until September, Tambry texted and told me all that. Hey, you know that 'Cold Creek' song of yours made the final cut?"

"Yeah, I heard," Dipper said. "Robbie called a couple of weeks ago and said he had to offer me ASCAP-standard royalties, so I signed the papers and all. But I've arranged for whatever little money it makes to go to the wildlife fund. The Gravity Falls one, I mean."

"Aw, sweet," Wendy said. That charity was one Ford had set up with the income from one of his and one of Fiddleford's patents to benefit creatures of Gravity Falls, specifically the sentient ones. If a Gnome or Manotaur needed medical help, they could draw on the fund. If Mrs. Lupei the werewolf needed a loan to help her get started as she and her daughter Ulva established their home, they, too, could benefit from the fund. It was a cause close to Dipper's heart.

And Wendy's, though she didn't make a big deal out of it. After all, she had once looked forward to the time she could move away from boring old Gravity Falls and live in a big city like Portland.

Except now, a little more mature and a lot more in love—

Well, she'd started to think that, after all, eventually she could call this place home.

For good.


	2. Chapter 2

**Beach Blanket Buff**

 **(August 12-15, 2015)**

* * *

 **2: Saturday Morning Car Tunes**

It was almost like when he was eight and Christmas was the next morning. That night Dipper had a hard time getting to sleep, and when he woke up wondering why his alarm hadn't gone off and how late he was, he saw it was only 2:44 A.M.

"Man," he mumbled, "I hate this!"

He punched his pillow as if trying to beat it into submission. He tossed and turned and tried to force himself to sleep, which never works. After a few minutes of this—he thought an hour had gone by, but his phone said the time was 3:01—and getting desperate, he began deep-breathing and relaxation imagery.

That would let him go to sleep, but on the way, he had to pass through the Mindscape.

And somebody lived, for a certain definition of "living," in the Mindscape.

Dipper expected to hear the hearty, high-pitched voice, and Bill didn't disappoint him: "Pine Tree! Hiya, kid, what's shaking? I hear rumors that you and I are going for a long ride and a private swim with Red." The voice became sly and insinuating: "I hope you're up for it!"

"Let me just get past this and sleep," Dipper groaned.

"Ah ha ha ha!" That same annoying laugh. "Oh, you lazy meat bags! So adorable! I never could understand why you spend a third of your limited life spans unconscious. What does it get you, aside from in a hurry to make it to the bathroom the next morning? Speaking of which, did you tinkle when you woke up? You know you should! Always go before you leave, kid."

"Please," Dipper groaned. In his mind's eye, he still lay in his attic bedroom, though in grays and blacks and whites it looked oddly distorted, as though it had become the size of a cathedral. The triangular window soared impossibly high and looked to be the size and roughly the shape of a Saturn rocket. His narrow bed seemed to have swelled until it was as big as a tennis court. Bill himself was small, though, thumbnail-sized, and hovering like a patient mosquito, if a mosquito wore a stovepipe hat and carried a cane.

But the voice was full-sized Bill's: "OK, OK, kid! Seriously, though, be sure to hit the can before you hit the road. Red would be amused if you had to pull off somewhere and go off and water the rhododendrons."

Not a good subject of conversation at that or any moment. Irritably, Dipper said, "Bill, do you know it's three o'clock in the morning?"

And the little triangle guy suddenly held a minute violin, which he began scraping as he sang: "It's three o'clock in the morning, / You've danced with Red in your dreams, / it's three o'clock in the morning, / Nothing is quite what it seems—"

Dipper snapped, "That's not what I meant, and you know it!"

"Gee, Captain Buzzkill, take it down a notch! Don't insult the musicians. I don't usually do requests, you know. OK, OK, I'll do you a favor. I'm gonna let you sleep, but I'm also gonna give you a warning. Two warnings, in fact. First, when you go for your spin with Red, remember to be careful when you think you're alone, because you're not."

Dipper ached to get out of this lucid dream, if that's what it was. "Got it. Let me go to sleep."

"No, no, wait a second. Second warning in the morning. You ready?"

"Go ahead."

The violin morphed into a guitar, and Bill began to shred and wail: "Well, don't you step on my blue suede shoes—"

"Gah!" The poor Elvis impersonation woke Dipper up all the way, and he realized he did need to visit the john. Which he did. Blessedly, when he returned to bed—3:11 now—he fell asleep before his head touched the pillow, and he stayed that way, maybe dreaming, maybe not, until six-thirty, when his phone chimed.

He jumped up, showered in five minutes, dressed in tee shirt, vest, and cargo shorts— _seems like old times, he thought—_ and picked up his already-packed backpack. After double-checking it—towel, trunks, sunscreen, snacks—he went quietly downstairs. He had just about memorized where Soos had deliberately left in the creaky boards, and he avoided the worst of them. At the bottom of the stair, very quietly, he let himself out. It was still ten minutes to seven.

The sun was up, and the sky straight overhead had that pale blue light that promised a hot, clear summer day. A thin mist clung to everything. Shouldering his pack, Dipper walked across the parking lot—later it would be crammed, because Soos made cheap parking available to Woodstick visitors, though he did throw in for free tram rides to the site and back.

But now only the company cars stood parked there, Melody's sedan, Soos's Jeep and pickup truck, and the golf cart. Two Gnomes were fooling around in it, pretending to drive. Dipper guessed they were kids. Hard to tell, because though Gnome babies started out the size of mice, they grew to nearly their full size in three months, and by four months they had developed beards.

Dipper waved, and they waved back but didn't speak, except to say, " _Vrooom_!" That was a joke—the golf cart wouldn't vroom if you put four million volts through it. He crunched his way down the drive, spotting a deer and two placid fawns browsing. A huge owl, returning home after his night's work, flew silently overhead.

Dipper reached the bottom of the drive and saw that the rhododendrons they had planted around the new sign had really taken hold. The peak blooming time had ended in June, but the plants were a deep, vivid green and healthy, and the sign Mabel had painted looked classy, welcoming unsuspecting tourists to the trap that was the Mystery Shack.

After just a couple of minutes he heard and recognized the sound of Wendy's 1973 Dodge Dart, and a moment later he saw the forest-green car round the curve and pull over. Wendy parked on the broad shoulder and got out, grinning. Dipper gulped. She was wearing cut-off jeans, and she had tied the tails of her flannel shirt over her sternum, leaving her tummy bare. Even in her trapper's hat and lumberjack boots, she looked sexy. He knew that she knew she was making an impression on him. "Hiya, Dip. Hey, you want to drive?"

"Uh—" Dipper said. He and Mabel had their California learners' permits, and over the summer they had logged almost enough supervised driving time with Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford to be eligible for their licenses right after their birthdays, but—"You're not old enough," he told her. "I mean, you couldn't certify my time because—"

"Meh, so what?" Wendy asked, grinning.

He couldn't help smiling back at her. "Uh, well—it's also illegal for me to drive unless there's an adult 21 or older in the front seat with me."

"Yeah, that's a point," Wendy agreed. "Except this is Gravity Falls!" She tossed him the keys and said, "Try not to hit any pedestrians!"

He smiled. "You remembered."

"Dude, if you remember it, I do." She climbed in the passenger seat and buckled up. "C'mon, man, I wanna see you do a three-point turn."

He did it flawlessly, because she had previously sent him everything she knew about driving—and there was very little about driving that she didn't know—telepathically. They shared memories and thoughts, but also skills and information.

"Think you can choke down a breakfast burrito?" she asked.

"Yeah, I guess so. Los Hermanos Brothers?"

"Yeah, drive-thru opens at seven. I brought a thermos of coffee, so we don't need their recycled motor oil."

They reached the restaurant, and Dipper pulled around to the speaker. _First time I've ever done this,_ he thought. Well, he'd be sixteen soon. There were bound to be a lot of first times ahead.

Wendy wanted a scrambled-egg-cheese-bacon burrito, so Dipper ordered two, plus hash brown potato nuggets. He pulled through. The kid working the serving window didn't seem to recognize either Dipper or Wendy but took Dipper's ten-dollar bill and gave him his change, making a mistake of a dollar in Dipper's favor.

Unlike his Grunkle Stan, Dipper handed the extra buck back with a smile and said, "Have a good day."

As they pulled off, Wendy said, "Now they'll remember us, Dip. Gravity Falls, man. Finders keepers is the law."

"For everything?" Dipper asked. "Man, I'm so glad we found each other."

"La-a-ame!" Wendy said. But she was laughing.

* * *

They pulled off the road about twenty minutes later, on Keeter's Ridge. They got out and sat at a roadside picnic table, watching the morning sun rising higher over the arched cliffs that resembled a flying saucer—for a good reason. The tallest hill in the valley happened to be heaped over the ancient crashed saucer that had carved out the silhouette in the cliffs.

"Cool morning," Wendy said, pouring two cups of coffee and offering Dipper a little bottle of cream. "Gonna heat up, though. Weatherman says high of ninety-six."

"I remember this one time when it was a hundred and five," Dipper said, doctoring his coffee. "That was the day Grunkle Stan made Mabel and me re-shingle the roof."

"Ouch!" Wendy said, wincing. She handed Dipper one of the burritos. "I like this view. The river looks like silver."

Dipper, munching his burrito, hummed.

"What's that?" Wendy asked. "Tune, I mean."

"Nothing," Dipper said. I just—sometimes lines for songs come to me. 'The river looks like silver' would be a good line for a song. Just one problem."

"What's that?"

"Find me a rhyme for 'silver,'" Dipper said.

"Hmmm."

They were on the road again in ten minutes. Wendy said, "You're kidding me, right? No rhyme for 'silver'?"

"Well, not unless you cheat. You know, "The river looks like silver, / The summer day will ver- / Y soon be hot. . .."

"Oog. Now, _that_ really is lame."

"Yeah, that's why I'd have to find another way to work the line into a song. _Silver_ is a toughie. Lots of words in English don't have rhymes, you know. Orange. Month. Purple. Um . . . pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis."

"Get out of town!"

Behind the wheel, Dipper grinned. "OK, I'm not sure about that one, but it's the longest word I can spell."

"Oh!" Wendy said, lapsing back into the breathless tone she had used when she and Dipper had acted out a seduction scene to trap some time-traveling spies, "My gallant nerd! Your dorkiness has won my heart! Don't hit the squirrel."

Dipper slowed the car, and ahead of them, a squirrel, with two empty lanes open to it, panicked and ran from side to side until Dipper had to practically stop before the squirrel finally chose a side and dashed off into the undergrowth. "I hear their brains work on one AAA battery," he told Wendy.

She didn't respond to that, but after a minute, she said softly, "Dude, sing me our song, OK? I'll join in."

Dipper's heart felt so full that for a moment he couldn't do it, but then he cleared his throat and started to sing softly:

* * *

 _I will always believe in fairy tales,_

 _And I'll wish on a shooting star._

 _I'll always keep searching for Wonderland,_

' _Cause that is where you are._

 _Oh, Wendy, you're my Magic Girl,_

 _You're my every dream come true,_

 _And if I owned the whole wide world,_

 _I would give it all to you,_

 _I would give it all to you._

* * *

Wendy sang along, and when she touched his arm and established their physical telepathy, they harmonized—not professionally, but beautifully.

"I love that song," Wendy said.

"It took me months to write it," Dipper told her. "So, your dad's not gonna wonder where you are today?"

"Nah. Sev'ral Timez is playing the festival, and he's a big fan, so he's at Woodstick. Except, get this, he doesn't think the boys should be exposed to some of the metal music, so he's sent them up to Aunt Sallie's for the weekend!"

"Oh, OK."

"My house is totally empty, Dip," Wendy said. "In case you don't want to visit the cave. . .."

"Uh—no, we promised each other. I think we ought to carry on with the original plan," Dipper said.

"Good man," Wendy said quietly. "You passed the test. Proud of you, Dip." She reached over and caressed his neck.

They sang a couple more songs, and Dipper felt so happy that five miles along, he almost hated to follow Wendy's direction and make a left turn down a logging road. "Where to?" he asked.

"Oh, dude, the first stop on our special tour," Wendy said. "I don't think even Ford knows about this one. Hardly anybody does, and the ones who do don't talk about it. It's called the Goofer Hole."

"And what's so great about it?" Dipper said, a little uneasily. He remembered the Pain Hole. _Not_ his favorite memory.

"Kinda goofs you up, I guess," Wendy said. "But it's harmless."

"OK," Dipper said. "I trust you."

Not far down the logging road, she had him stop at a wide place and they got out. "'Bout a half-mile hike, but it's not bad," she said. "Come on. Let's get a little goofy."

She led the way, and Dipper followed, and as he watched her long strides and the play of her hips in those cut-offs, he thought to himself, _I'm feeling kinda goofy already._

 _What the heck. I like it!_


	3. Chapter 3

**Beach Blanket Buff**

 **(August 12-15, 2015)**

* * *

 **3: Goofing Around and Blowing off Steam**

The day was warming up fast, and Dipper began to sweat as they made their little hike. Out here the only sounds were the wind, birdsong, and the hammering of woodpeckers. Gravity Falls must have more woodpeckers per square inch than any place its size in North America.

The trees were mostly pines and firs, with a few hardwoods mixed in. Dipper recognized three species of pine, as well as Pacific Madrone, white oak, and red alder. That knowledge, like his knowledge of driving, had come straight from Wendy's mind into his. He concentrated on spotting more trees, because walking behind Wendy, he found it hard to concentrate on anything other than, well, Wendy.

"Oh, yeah, I recognize this place. There it is," she said as they went over a low rise. "The Goofer Hole, straight ahead. Check it out!"

"That's it?" Dipper asked. As a natural wonder it was about as majestic and impressive as a chipmunk's fart. Yes, they do, and it smells like nuts.

A low bluff of what looked like shale reared on the right side of the trail, no more than five feet tall, as though a reef of rock had broken through the surface soil. In the face of the low cliff, Dipper saw a round hole about a foot in diameter. Except for the grass growing exceptionally tall and green in front of it, it didn't seem very interesting.

"Hang on a sec," Wendy said, taking her phone out and tapping on it as intently as Tambry did when updating her status. "There we go. OK, ground rules: we're gonna sit on that patch of tall grass, right? When my phone alarm goes off in ten minutes, we get up and walk away, no matter what."

"Uh—OK?" Dipper said. "What's going to happen?"

"You'll find out. Scared?"

Dipper shrugged. "Apprehensive."

"Oh, fancy word for scared," she said, grinning.

He gave in. "Well, yeah, kinda. But I guess it couldn't be worse than Mabel's bubble or the Horroracle, right? Let's do it."

Wendy told him what they would do, and following her directions, they sat facing each other, with the hole on Wendy's right, his left. It was only about three feet away. It still looked like a dark hole, as though some giant prehistoric stonepecker had chipped out a den. "Feel anything?" Wendy asked.

"No, except the grass kinda tickles. Wait—am I just imagining a cool breeze coming out of the hole?"

Wendy smiled mysteriously. "We'll see."

Dipper kept turning his cheek to try to catch the little current of air, but he wasn't sure. It felt cool, and it smelled a little earthy, like an underground mushroom farm, but—he couldn't tell whether it was coming out of the hole or just down the slope.

Wendy pulled her boots off, then her socks. She wriggled her long toes. "Feels good," she said with a happy sigh.

Dipper started to chuckle.

"What's wrong, dude?" she asked, snickering a little herself.

Dipper's stomach fluttered. "Nothing. I just love your toes!" He laughed out loud that time. "Your piggies!"

"Wee, wee, wee!" Wendy agreed, laughing and wiggling her toes furiously.

Now Dipper couldn't stop laughing. "The grass is too long!" he said. He couldn't add anything, because that sounded so hysterically funny to him that he laughed so hard that tears leaked out of his eyes.

"Why do all Pines men have such red—red—" Wendy fell onto her back, holding her stomach and hooting. She could barely squeak, "Red noses!"

"I—I know, right?" Dipper asked, "Oh, man!" For some time he couldn't go on through the storms of guffaws. "You get us—Pines guys—together—in, in, a restaurant—heee!" Like Wendy, he fell, except sideways, clutching his stomach. "Hee! And, and we look like—clowns having breakfast!"

"Wah!" Wendy bellowed rolling on her back and kicking her bare feet in the air. "Clowns having breakfast! Good one!"

"I love your pink piggy toes!" Dipper said. "Your pi-pink toesies and my red no—no—hee! Nosy!"

"Toesy nosy!" Wendy yelped. "Oh, I'm dying!"

The phone went off—the tune was the first one that Wendy and Dipper had ever danced to—and Wendy jumped up, though she still heaved with laughter as she snatched up her socks and boots. "C'mon! Gotta go now!"

She tried to help Dipper up, but he couldn't stop laughing and couldn't get to his feet. He crawled on hands and knees down the trail. Wendy thought that was hilarious. Shaking with belly laughs, she pretended to sit on his back. "Giddyap, horsey!"

He reached the top of the next rise, collapsed, and rolled onto his back between her legs, and then pulled her down onto him. "I'm gonna kiss your lips!" he said.

He did, with bad aim but high enthusiasm. "Dude!" Wendy yelped, laughing, "that was halfway to my ear!"

He heaved, gasping for air. "Hee! Gonna—gonna stick my tongue—right in your ear!"

But he didn't. Never got around to it. Later he made a coded note in his Journal: _Lying in the grass with a beautiful girl stretched out on top of you, and both of you laughing like loons—this is a joy every guy should experience at least once._

Gradually their laughter subsided, and then, lying side by side in the grass, they slowly caught their breath. Dipper's diaphragm ached, as did his cheeks, and he asked, "Why were we laughing?"

"It's the Goofer Hole," Wendy said. "The air coming out of it has that effect. I never even heard about it until I was in high school. Kids come out here to sort of get high, real temporarily."

A secondary wave of laughter hit Dipper. "Oh, my God! Did you and me just do drugs?"

"No, no," she said, laughing with him. "It's not a drug, not exactly. Something in the air coming out of the hole."

Dipper rolled on his stomach and looked down the hillside at the big plume of exceptionally lush and green grass. "Huh. I'll bet it's nitrous oxide!"

"Laughing gas?" Wendy asked. "Our dentist gives us that, and it smells sweet. This doesn't have an odor."

"Well—something _like_ nitrous oxide," Dipper said. "The nitrogen would encourage the grass to grow like that. And it works like nitrous oxide. My lips are numb!"

"That—that's why—" Wendy broke into giggles. "Why your aim is so bad!"

"Let me try again."

This time their lips made contact. When they broke the kiss, he said, "Your lips numb?"

"Mm, can't tell yet," she said, hooking her arm around his neck. "This calls for further experiments!"

"Whoo!" Dipper said after a few more highly rewarding experiments. "Wow. That was fun—but I'm sort of leery about doing this much, or often."

"Yeah, that's why I set the alarm," Wendy said, pulling her socks and boots back on. "Don't think it'd kill you, but you could get pretty racked up from laughing so hard."

Dipper fought off an aftershock of giggles. "Well—now—now I know—I know what Mabel feels like on—hee!—Smile Dip!"

"'Cept this is Laugh Dip. Laugh Dipper!"

That brought on the final spasms. Then they both got up, held hands, and walked back, passing the Goofer Hole at a respectful distance. "Oh, man," Dipper said. "That was exhilarating and spooky all at once! I still feel good, though."

"Yeah, that's a lingering after-effect. Hangs on for a couple hours. Best thing, there's no sort of crash after. You just go back to your normal mood."

"I ought to get Grunkle Ford to study this."

"Better not," Wendy cautioned. "I think of Ford started laughing like that, he'd sprain his spleen."

They hiked back to the car and then Dipper drove a couple more miles, down a winding road, until Wendy told him to pull off again. "I'll show you the Gravity Falls geyser field now," Wendy said. "Don't expect too much!"

As they set off on foot once more, they had a few glimpses of the surrounding countryside through breaks in the trees. At one point Dipper stopped, pointed, and said, "Is that Ghost Falls way over there?"

"Good eye," Wendy said. "Yep, that's the plateau. On the far side is the ghost town. On this side, the grassy hill and the hot spring, remember?"

"Oh, yeah," Dipper said. Wendy had taken him there for a memorable natural hot-tubbing experience. "Huh. I guess there must be, like, some geothermal activity all through this stretch of the Valley."

"Yep. Probably it's all from the same source, hot spring and the geysers. We take this footpath."

The narrow trail wound downhill through a forest of tall trees, mostly Douglas fir. The ground leveled out and grew soft and muddy—and Dipper's nose twitched. "Sulfur?" he asked.

"It ain't Easter eggs," Wendy said. "See the plumes of steam ahead? That's the Devil's Kettle."

"Huh," Dipper said. "There's a place with the same name—I think in Minnesota? A waterfall splits in two, and half of it goes into a river and the other half disappears down a hole and nobody knows where it disappears to. The hole they call the Devil's Kettle."

"This is more like a cooking kettle," Wendy said. They had come to an area of tall reeds. "OK, stay on the rocks here. You don't want to slip off."

They followed an outcrop of vaguely volcanic-looking rock until they stood looking down into a pool about ten feet across—not a pool of water but one of seething yellow mud. Great opaque bubbles rose and popped, releasing a foul-smelling steam. The whole thing made a gluey, glurching, blupping sound.

"Wow," Dipper said. "I had no idea. Is the mud really boiling?"

"Don't think it's quite that hot," Wendy said. "Somewhere underground, steam's escaping, along with water. Don't get me wrong, it's pretty hot—maybe a hundred and fifty degrees—but technically not boiling, not here at the surface. This is end-of-the summer mud. It's a lot thicker and more sluggish than in the spring—more rain, I guess, thins it down and you can easily get splattered, 'cause the mud leaps up in fountains when the bubbles rise. Phew! Stinks. Okay, let's go a little further and I'll show you Gravity Falls's answer to Yellowstone."

That was another half-mile hike. The geysers were clustered close together, and as Wendy had warned, they weren't all that impressive. They were basically fumaroles, jets of hissing steam that had built up cones of mineral deposits about three or four feet tall. Occasionally one would gurgle as hot water sprayed out, but unlike Old Faithful, these just sent up a quick blast of drops before settling back into steam-kettle mode.

However, the bases were pretty—minerals dissolved in the water had dyed the rounded cones red and green. It was a pity that the geysers extended over only about an acre. They found a few that were not even geysers, just bubbling little fountains of hot water in a colorful basin of orange, red, and green sand. They gave about the same effect you'd get from shaking up a can of ginger ale and quickly burying it under a few inches of sand.

"It's not much," Wendy told him. "But that's our geothermal show."

"Worth the walk, though," Dipper said. "Interesting and different. Just like Gravity Falls."

"Hold my hand."

He did, gladly, and she grinned. "You're telling the truth," she said. "You really are interested. I'm glad."

"Yeah, it's one of the minor wonders of nature," Dipper said. "Maybe Soos can get some footage here and do like a ten-minute video show in the Shack about the Devil's Kettle and, um, the Demons' Steam Bath."

"We'll suggest it. Wait a minute—now you're thinking of the hot spring where we soaked!"

"Yeah, you read my mind," Dipper said. "We _won't_ tell him about that place. If we go back to it, I'd like it to be completely private."

"Me, too," she said happily. "OK, now I want to take you to the one place in Gravity Falls where you can see all the way to Mount Hood if the day's clear enough. Fantastic view, but we gotta take the old Bluff Road, and it's steep and curvy, so I'll drive."

Dipper fished the keys from his pocket and gave them to her. "By the way," he said, "you've got your car looking fantastic."

"Thanks. Took a lot of hard work to get it there," Wendy said as she put her arm around his waist and slipped her hand into the back pocket of his cargo shorts. "But I liked doing it. Yeah, the poor old Green Machine was pretty much a wreck when I first bought it—engine about shot, didn't even have a rear seat back then, body all bunged up. Now it's so snazzy that I keep getting offers on it! Mr. Gleeful offered me thirty thousand, so it's probably worth twice that to a collector."

"Please don't sell it," Dipper said.

"Don't intend to!" she told him with a sideways glance. "Why? You sentimental over it?"

"Not exactly," Dipper said. "I'm just afraid that if you didn't have it, Dad wouldn't love you any longer."

That brought on nearly as much laughter as goofing with the Goofer Hole had.

In a continuing good mood, they drove up to Glacier Peak—Dipper was glad that Wendy took the wheel for that mountainous trip—and marveled at how much and how far they could see.

In the forenoon of that clear, happy day, it seemed almost as though they could look into forever.


	4. Chapter 4

**Beach Blanket Buff**

 **(August 12-15, 2015)**

* * *

 **4: Mountain High, Valley Low**

After the overlooks, Wendy took Dipper to a spot high on one of the bluffs surrounding Gravity Falls Valley. Off to the right, and about a hundred feet below them, the shelf of rock that was the plateau overlooking the ghost town of Plenty, a former mining settlement, jutted out from the cliffs. Dipper could see the glint of light on the beaver pond and could just glimpse the white water where Ghost Falls plummeted into the pond. Past that, and invisible, was the hot spring where he and Wendy had gone hot-tubbing. Nice memories.

"OK," Wendy said. "Now this next part is hard to get to, but I came prepared!" She had parked the Dodge Dart well away from the bluff's edge—at this point it was almost a vertical drop down to the valley floor four hundred feet below. She opened the trunk and took out a coil of rope. "Come on. This won't be any worse than Mabel's grappling hook."

"That can be pretty bad," Dipper pointed out.

"Don't lame out, man!" Wendy urged. "I want you to see this. It's right over—yeah, there."

At some point in the past—maybe a hundred years or more, from the look of it—someone had driven a heavy iron stake into the rock itself. A fat iron donut of a ring had been fixed to the stake. "That looks rusty," Dipper said, because he sensed what Wendy was planning.

Yes, she threaded the rope through the iron ring. "Rusty, but sturdy enough. This is a buntline hitch," she explained as she deftly made an intricate-looking knot. "Want to learn how to tie one?"

"Sure," Dipper said.

She stood up, dusting her hands, and reached out. "Take my hands and look into my eyes."

They stood facing each other, and in a surge their touch-telepathy sent everything that Wendy knew about tying knots (and she knew as much as the average Eagle Scout) flooding into Dipper's mind. He immediately understood the purposes of clove hitches, running bowlines, bights, and dozens of other knots—and he knew how to tie them all. "You are amazing," he told Wendy.

"I know, right?" she asked. "Dad taught me most of those. Real handy in serious camping. Speaking of that, next summer we gotta get in some camping, man! Missed it this year."

"Sounds great. So, now, uh—"

"Now we visit the Crystal Cave. Except it's not really a cave, more like a hollow in the cliff. I'll go first. It's about ten feet down. Be careful!"

She swung over the edge of the bluff, making Dipper cringe. He lay flat on his belly and watched her rappel down and then steady herself on a ledge only about three feet wide. "Come on down, Dip! I'll steady the rope. Don't fall, man!"

"Right," Dipper muttered. He took a deep breath. Unlike Stan and Mabel, he had no particular fear of heights.

Now, plunging down four hundred feet to splat on rocks— _that_ he sort of worried about. But he took a good grip on the rope, let himself down, and instead of rappelling he took it hand over hand, the way he climbed the hated rope in PE class at school. He felt Wendy's hand close on his ankle, and she said, "You're doin' good, Dip. Just a little more. Don't try to drop, you might lose your balance, just climb down and get a good footing. There you go! Not too shabby, dude!"

Dipper was breathing hard. "Whoa!" he said.

Because he was looking into an oval break in the cliff face, maybe six feet tall by four wide at its widest point. And it was so _purple_!

"Step inside," Wendy said. "I'm right behind you."

He did and saw what Wendy had meant about its not being a proper cave. It went back only about ten feet. The floor was smooth—but everywhere else, walls and ceiling (really all one curving surface, like the interior of a gigantic egg) bristled with purple, shimmering crystals as big as his head. "Pretty, huh?" Wendy asked. "Long time ago, before 1900, some dude found this and chipped away the crystals on the bottom. They left everything else untouched. World's biggest geode, am I right?"

"Must be in the top ten, at least," Dipper said. "I think these crystals are amethyst!"

"Probably. I'm glad it's hard to get to. Otherwise, people'd be junking it up with soda cans and chip bags and chipping off pieces and writing on the crystals with permanent markers."

Dipper touched one hexagonal crystal. The purple coloring was amazingly deep. He looked at Wendy and smiled. "We're purple!" he said.

It was true—the intense reflected light in the small cavern made their skin look a violet-purple. It darkened Wendy's green plaid flannel shirt to almost black and made her cut-off jeans the deepest blue he had ever seen.

"Ever kissed a purple girl?" Wendy asked.

"Let me try it."

Yep. It was fully as good as kissing a normal-colored one.

Beautiful as it was, the giant geode really didn't offer much beyond the initial impression, so they didn't linger. Wendy steadied the rope as Dipper climbed back up. On the way, he discovered that in addition to knots and how to tie them, she had sent him some skills at mountaineering, probably while they were kissing. He used the cliff face this time, and found his ascent easier than climbing down had been. Wendy followed, and she said, "Wanna try untying the knot?"

He did, easily. "I love being able to learn things from each other like this," he said.

Wendy used her shoulder and left hand to coil the rope again. "Yeah, man, in college we can probably ace all the classes if we pool our knowledge!"

"You're already in college," Dipper said.

She stowed the rope in the trunk again. "Yep, and doing great 'cause of picking up so much math from you. By the time we get ready for the real thing, I'll have a whole year's worth of credits to transfer."

"Then you'll graduate ahead of me," Dipper said. "Are you thinking of getting a job then? Because if you want your own career, I'm not going to complain about that. You'd be great at anything you tried."

"We'll see, dude. But I wouldn't count on my graduating early. I know you, man. You'll take overloads and go to summer school, and I'll bet you a hundred bucks we'll walk across that college stage together! That's why I wanted the head start."

"Wendy," Dipper said quietly as they stood leaning against the car and holding hands, "I have to admit it. I'm a little scared of college."

"Yeah, it's gonna be new," Wendy said. "But you were scared to try out for track, right? And that turned out great. Hey, you never told me—Varsity next year?"

"Yes," Dipper said. "I'm not the assistant coach, though, or team captain. Jorgenson is the coach of the Varsity track team, and he's going with seniors. I'll still be running the hundred-meter or the two hundred-meter, though. I'm already the best in the school at that." He made a face. "Listen to me brag."

She hip-bumped him. "You got a right, man. All right, half an hour down into the Valley again, and then it'll be eleven-thirty or about that. Ready for our picnic?"

"You know I am!"

"Then climb in and let's go!"

* * *

Wendy drove them down. They had to go back the same way they had come—and going down was even scarier than climbing up the Bluff Road. Hardly anyone used it, because there wasn't much to see or do at the top of the bluffs. The road, which Wendy said had been blasted out as a WPA project back during the Great Depression, wasn't in the best repair, and Dipper had noticed one or two places where the guard rails had been broken away. "Must be bad if a car goes over," he said.

"Never any survivors," Wendy agreed. "I was just a little girl the last time there was an accident, though. Even teens take it slow going up. Of course, the kind of cars most teens have to drive, most of them can't make it up to the top without their radiator blowing!"

They wound their careful way down, then followed River Road to the beach area.

Wendy had been right—nobody was swimming, the park ranger shack was dark and empty, and except for the green Dart, the parking area was deserted. The swimming float rested on a lake nearly as smooth as a mirror. Scuttlebutt Island lay clear on the surface, sitting on its own reflection. Dipper said, "You know, that place is overrun with beavers. That's where we first saw McGucket's Gobblewonker robot."

Wendy put her hand on his shoulder. "Like in your book."

"Yes. Oh, the editor wants me to change the bit about Hoss finding a beaver playing with a chainsaw. She says that would never happen in real life."

"Yeah, Dip, stick to truth in your fiction," Wendy said, patting his shoulder and chuckling.

They got out the picnic basket and Dipper's backpack and hiked over to the public pier. Manly Dan's little skiff was tied up near the end, and they climbed down into it. Wendy checked the outboard. "OK, got plenty of gas. Cast off, Dip, and we'll get this expedition underway! I'm hungry."

Dipper found he knew how to cast off the bow and stern lines, and he settled down up in the bow. Wendy paddled the boat away from the pier before yanking the starter cord. The motor roared to life, and they puttered away from the dock. "Once we get away from the no-wake zone, I'll speed up," Wendy promised. "Hey, you know what we forgot?"

Dipper opened his pack. "Sunscreen!"

It was a little touchy in the small boat, but they took off their shirts—Wendy wore her red bikini top under hers, and Dipper was already in his swim trunks—and applied the cream, taking turns rubbing it on each other's backs. "Wanna do my legs?" Wendy asked in a teasing voice.

"Love to, but I'd better not," Dipper said.

"OK, you adorkable chicken!" Wendy said. They each did their own legs instead.

Dipper, replacing the tube, asked, "Adorkable?"

"It's a word!" Wendy said. "You can look it up."

Just for fun, she took them buzzing out and around Scuttlebutt Island. Dipper pointed out the distant round islet that he and Mabel usually called Rocky Head and told her about their experience the time they found a gigantic tooth.

"I've heard stories about that," Wendy said. "But they say it only wakes up like, once every twenty years or some junk. Sounds pretty creepy."

"I saved the footage we took," Dipper said. "I'll show you some time—transferred it to an MP4 file. There's a lot of Bear-O in it, though."

"Bear-O, dude?"

"You'll see," Dipper said. "It's more terrifying than a flying cannibalistic island."

Wendy skimmed them along the surface, the wind in their faces, their hair whipping. They headed for the base of the waterfall, hearing its constant thunder growing louder as they approached.

Dipper, in the bow, peered ahead. "OK," he shouted over his shoulder, "looks to me like the best place to tie up is off to the left of the Falls. There's a little rocky outcrop to shield it from the turbulence at the falls' base, and I see some trees that we can moor the boat to."

It was a little finicky—the falls roiled the water, making the boat rock alarmingly—but they slipped behind the outcrop, Dipper jumped out with the line, and he tied the bow to a tree. Wendy climbed out and tied the stern to another nearby sapling. "That oughta hold it," she said. "Hope so, 'cause if the boat drifts off, we'll have to walk like twenty miles around the edge of the lake to get back to the car!"

"Want to haul it up on shore?" Dipper asked. "I think we could manage it."

Wendy tested the lines. "No, it should be fine." She packed their change of clothes in the picnic basket, which wasn't nearly full, and they were ready. She told Dipper, "OK, I'll carry the picnic basket, and our clothes, you get your pack, and let's see if we can find a way into this magical cave of which you speak!"

That proved hard. They could approach to within a few yards of the fall's boiling white-water base, but the rocks underfoot were slippery, and they couldn't even see the cave opening.

However, Dipper pointed out "This edge looks like it's mostly spray, not pounding water. If we can keep from slipping off, we might be able to make it. Get closer, anyway. Got another rope?"

"Yeah, a couple. I'll go get them." Wendy set down the bagged basket, and in less than a minute she came back with two coils of rope. "What's the idea?"

"Let's tie the longest one to one of the big rocks," Dipper said. "I'll hang onto it and see if I can edge into the cave from here. If I can, I'll tie it off inside—heck, if the Gobblewonker's still lying where it beached, I can tie it to that—and then you can follow."

"Let's waterproof our stuff first," Wendy said. They had brought plastic trash bags, and they double-bagged and double-tied both the basket and Dipper's backpack.

"If I can make it in OK," Dipper said, "I'll come back out for the pack. Here goes."

He wore his rubber-soled shoes—the soles gave his feet a little better purchase on the mossy, wet rocks—and hugged the base of the cliff as much as he could. He squinted against the constant spray and clenched his teeth as the roar of the plunging cascade made his bones vibrate. For a shocking moment a heavy rain of cold water hit his bare skin, but then he edged behind the corner of the falls. Wiping his eyes, he saw a sandy spill ahead, made it onto that, and then slipped around the arched corner of the cavern. And then he stood inside the cave.

No Gobblewonker robot. Fiddleford must have salvaged it. But Dipper climbed up the sandy slope to a place where boulders thrust upward, found a solidly-fixed one, and tied the rope.

He went back, the return trip easier because he could cling to the rope, and he told Wendy the way in was passable. "But we better hang on to the rope with one hand," he said. "I'm not sure we can handle the picnic basket and the backpack, though."

"I think I got a way," Wendy said. She picked up the shorter rope, used a knife from the picnic basket to cut it into two lengths, replaced the knife, re-bagged the basket, and then jury-rigged two handles for the burdens they'd carry.

That made it possible. They slung the handles over their shoulders and set out, Dipper gripping the backpack handle with his right hand and the guide rope with his left. Wendy squealed as the cold shower hit her, but they both made it inside.

"Man!" she said when they stood on the sandy beach, her red hair plastered down to her face and back. "You weren't kidding. I don't think anybody knows this place is even here!"

"Are you warm enough?" Dipper asked.

"Yeah, not so bad if you're not standing in the freezing water! Hey, it's a lot quieter in here than I thought it would be."

"I guess the back side of water isn't as loud as the front," he said.

The daylight coming in through the waterfall gave everything a dreamy, blue-tinged look. They found a spot, spread out their beach blanket, and Wendy unpacked the picnic basket. "Some food, some relaxing, absolute privacy, and I'd say all that will round off just about a perfect day," she said.

"I'm on board with that!"

She and Dipper settled down side by side, she opened a second thermos—not coffee this time, but herbal tea—and they began to dig into the sandwiches and fruit.

"Brought some Washington apples for dessert," she said. "You like apples?"

"Everybody likes apples!" he said, grinning.

"Mm. Make us feel like Adam and Eve, right?" Wendy asked, smiling. "Here you go. Here's your cup of tea."

He took it and, grateful for its warmth, sipped it.

"Mm," he murmured. "Peppermint."


	5. Chapter 5

**Beach Blanket Buff**

 **(August 12-15, 2015)**

* * *

 **5: Bliss on a Blanket**

The two teens ate, but they couldn't keep their hungry eyes off each other. And they ate in the silliest way possible: they fed each other sandwiches, tenderly wiped each other's mouths with napkins, and felt each other's excitement growing.

They gazed into each other's eyes, and their pupils dilated, a subtle sign of arousal.

Their chests felt tight, and they found it a little hard to breathe. Another sign of arousal.

They kept kissing between bites. Now, that's some good arousal right there.

"Dipper," Wendy whispered as they finished—light meal, just one sandwich and one cup of tea each, and they didn't touch the apples—"man, all alone here, feeling like this, we are gonna have to be so careful!"

"I know," Dipper groaned, stroking her hair. "When I think about having to leave you—"

She put a finger against his lips. "Shh. Shh. We're not gonna think about that right now. We'll worry about that later. And anyway, we won't ever be far from each other—texting and face-timing—"

"It doesn't take the place of this," he said, squeezing her hand.

She felt his yearning for her, and through the magic of their touch, she sent back the same feeling she had for him. "Oh, man," she murmured. "We drew the line, Dip. Maybe we should leave before something happens. We can't cross that line now."

"I know," he whispered. "But we can lie here and hold each other and fantasize."

"If I get carried away, you stop me," she warned.

"Same here. Maybe—maybe we should set your phone alarm?"

"Wouldn't work, Dip," she murmured, her breath warm in his face, her hand soft on his cheek. "This feels so timeless."

They lay on the yellow blanket decorated with red Valentine hearts, spread on the soft sand, and Dipper draped a towel over himself—their mental make-outs were all in their minds, true, but that didn't mean they didn't make something of a physical mess—and they hugged each other and lost themselves in the feelings they shared, and those feelings intensified more and more.

Let's talk about love in terms Stanford would understand.

In physics, a principle called resonance means that if two vibrations are in harmony, they reinforce each other and build and build until, inevitably, something gives. Fill a coffee cup to the brim and try to walk across a big room holding it and not spilling a drop. Odds are against you. Most people walk rhythmically, and the coffee picks up the vibrations of walking, manifests them as ripples, and magnifies therm. Most people can't walk more than about ten steps without sloshing some coffee out.

However, _not_ spilling the coffee is a snap if you ain't got rhythm, because the vibrations don't build. But then you ain't got rhythm, you ain't got music, you ain't got your girl or alternatively your guy, and you sure as heck would ask for a whole lot more. And Old Man Trouble would be sure to hang around your door. Alternatives considered, it's better to spill a little coffee now and then.

Well, maybe not on the planet Arrakis. Sandworms purely love them some rhythm, which they regard as the equivalent of Bearnaise sauce: It makes the meal tastier. Stumble-footed klutzes rule on Arrakis.

The principle works on a macroscale, too. On April 12, 1831, a company of 74 British soldiers marched partway across the Broughton Suspension Bridge near Manchester. It was in excellent shape and was only five years old.

Yet as the soldiers marched in perfect rhythm, the bridge began to sway and vibrate—and collapsed into its component parts, giving the soldiers rather a nasty surprise.

Fortunately, the river they plunged into was only two feet deep, and nobody—well, maybe Sergei, but nobody else—could drown in it. Nobody died, but the troops felt an intense embarrassment and kept murmuring apologies to each other, the ruins of the bridge, and the river. Very British of them.

Not until years later did physicists understand what had happened. The resonance of the soldiers' marching footfalls synced with the bridge's harmonics. Each step of the march added a wee bit more energy, and the bridge magnified and reflected that until it shook itself to pieces.

How romantic.

You don't think so? Well, take a different example: Take two teens who love each other and who can exchange feelings telepathically, put them together kissing and hugging on a beach towel, the girl wearing a brief red bikini, the boy knee-length swim shorts so that lots of skin presses against lots of skin, and turn them loose.

Each pulse of affection that she feels hits him, resonates, and is magnified and reflected back to her, and vice-versa. And the feelings build and build, like a snowball growing as it rolls down a steep hill, they writhe and groan and murmur, they breathe harder and harder, they clench their fingers and toes, and finally the bridge crumbles—

"Ahh, yes! Yes! YES! Oh, Dipper!"

"I love you, Wendy!"

Some intense gasping and panting.

"Whoo!"

"Hah—hah—oh, that was intense!"

"You OK, Dip?"

"I am _great_! I am _awesome_! You?"

"Ohhh, yeah! Best one yet, man! And we kept our promise about not getting physical. Uh—do you need to, uh—"

"Yeah," he said. "I'll just, uh, I need to—I'll be right back."

She chuckled throatily. "I'm not going anywhere, man!"

Dipper rose and took his extra towel and set off around a tumble of rock for a little privacy, a place where he could, you know, sort of push the trunks down and do a little drying with the towel.

He noticed that beneath his bare feet the footing changed from the coarse, cool sand to something spongy and warm. The cave was far from dark—the vast arch of the opening let sunlight filtered through falling water flood in—but behind the shadow of the rock outcrop it was difficult to see.

Whatever. He took care of business and then walked down the slope, to where Wendy lay stretched out at full glorious length, long legs crossed at the ankles, arms stretched over her head, her red hair disheveled. Her expression looked so placid, so happy, so, so fulfilled. She gave him a sleepy smile. "Oh, Dip, that might _almost_ last me until June!"

He lay down next to her. "I'll miss you so much."

They kissed, and she said, "Let's just cuddle, OK?"

So they did. Outside the day had heated up to ninety degrees plus, but the waterfall and the dimness of the cave kept the temperature there in the low eighties—warm enough for comfort, warm enough to make a happy couple feel sleepy. Wendy, totally relaxed and blissed out, was in the mood for a nap, and she turned on her side and he spooned her, reaching around to hold her hand.

Her breathing became relaxed, and he felt her slip into sleep. There's a sweet resonance to that, too, and before very long, he had joined her in dreamland. Whenever they slept touching, they could also share dreams.

Or even nightmares.

Though they were thirty feet away and could not see it, something small was happening behind that fall of boulders, Dipper's privacy spot.

If Dipper had thought to take a flashlight with him, he would have seen that he had stepped off the sand and onto a shelf of stone. It had felt oddly warm and soft because a cushioning growth of moss had covered the stone to a depth of a few inches. In the darkness, deprived of direct sunlight, no doubt the moss grew slowly, but it didn't have anything but growing to do, and over many years it had formed a broad carpet.

In the light from a flashlight, it would have looked a different shade of green, dark and strongly shading toward blue. In fact, you would be puzzled whether to call it green or blue. In many ways, it was a primitive plant, related to the blue-green algae that, 2.5 billion years ago next Tuesday, one morning looked around the barren Earth, which had an atmosphere with no free oxygen, and decided, "This place could use some redecorating."

With the single-minded resolution of a living thing that frankly had no mind at all, single or double, the cyanobacteria—AKA blue-green algae—began to absorb sunlight, turn it and carbon dioxide into food, and fart out oxygen.

Which changed the whole atmosphere of the planet and made possible the evolution of specialized creatures dependent on breathing that oxygen, either from the air or dissolved in water: the splendidly efficient Great White Shark, perfect killing machine, the majestic Blue Whale, bigger than any dinosaur that ever lived, the awe-inspiring condor with a wingspread as wide as that of a small airplane, the mighty elephant, the industrious ant, the cunning fox, the dumb bunny, the speed-law-breaking three-toed sloth, as well as teachers, doctors, ministers, lawyers, uh . . . politicians. . ..

Well, they can't _all_ be gems.

Anyhow, this is getting off the point, rather.

The moss was not cyanobacteria or blue-green algae, but it was a descendant of theirs, a specialized, highly evolved form of life.

Dipper had left two bare footprints crushed into the surface when he stepped onto it.

While he and Wendy dozed not far away, the footprints quietly began to fill with liquid. Not water—the moss itself was deliquescing. Or, to put it in layman's terms, the moss, its fine suede-like filaments breaking down, was melting into a shimmering, viscous blue liquid. First a few drops, and then they touched and merged, and then the footprints became little puddles, and a tiny stream from one print leaked into the other and then they were one. . ..

Something quite wonderful was happening.

It didn't matter that it was horrifying. Well, it _did_ matter, but still—

This is Gravity Falls.

And the in its own bizarre way, the process was wonderful.


	6. Chapter 6

**Beach Blanket Buff**

 **(August 12-15, 2015)**

* * *

 **6: Jelly Girl**

Wendy snapped awake with an unfocused but strong feeling: _Something's wrong!_ She rolled over. "Dipper! Where are you?"

From farther in the cave came his panicky voice: "Run, Wendy! Get out of here!"

Wendy jumped up and then fell again. Something had snagged her right ankle. She sat down and tried to see what it was—something like a flexible vine wrapped around—it felt elastic—but though it stretched a few inches when she pulled, it anchored her to the sand, something strong and tough and—translucent blue? It looked like an inch-thick rope made of jelly. She pulled at it, pounded on it, and made no impression. She couldn't break it with her hands alone. "I'm caught, Dipper!"

"Me, too! This—thing dragged me up here! Behind the rocks! I—I'm stuck, and I don't think I can get loose! Do whatever you have to but get out of here! Go!"

"Your backpack!" Wendy yelled. She stretched out. "Can't—quite—reach it!" The tips of her fingers swiped the fabric, but she couldn't get hold of it.

Something moved up in the cave. It came down the sand toward her, a bizarre lurching motion. It fell, got up again, and toddled down the slope as though just learning to walk. It was—a naked boy, about half the size of Dipper—but as mature as Dipper, she couldn't be mistaken about that! "What's going on?" Wendy demanded.

The body seemed to be made of the same kind of blue jelly as the—tentacle, whatever it was, that had rooted Wendy to the sand. Its body too was translucent, the skin drippy and oozy. It tended to flow, to sag. It stopped at the corner of the beach blanket. "Wendy," it said in a soft, burbly voice and sort of pulled itself together. It even looked like Dipper! "Don't be afraid. You'll be part of it all soon."

Wendy pulled furiously at the tether, without budging it. Beneath the sand it must have rooted itself in the earth or wrapped itself around a rock. "What are you talking about?"

The form huddled down, melted, surged, heaved, and—reshaped itself into a miniature naked Wendy. "See? You will be like this!" it said, spreading its arms and sounding cheerful. "Once you are absorbed."

Wendy tried to squeeze her ankle through the gripping loop of the tentacle. It tightened. "I don't _want_ to be absorbed! Dipper!"

"I can't move, Wendy! I'm stuck to this—blue moss, I guess!"

The faux Wendy said in the same voice as it had when resembling Dipper, "It will take days for him to be absorbed, and then it will be your turn. Flesh and bones must dissolve. His new body will be like mine. But his mind will be his own."

"Then he won't let you hurt me!" Wendy said.

"No, he will become one like me. Because of his new form, he will want you to join us. He will help when we absorb you. Don't worry. It does not hurt much. Your mind will inside the new body when you are absorbed. You'll be like this, like Dipper and me. We'll live together. The only thing you will miss is the sun. We can't go in the sunshine. Must stay always in the cave! But we will make much love among us. You can change your body any way. Make parts bigger, smaller, even change from male to female. You are female, right?"

"Look, you can't just kidnap us," Wendy said, reverting to reason. "That's wrong!"

"We don't reproduce like you," the jelly girl said, ignoring her. "But in these forms we can pleasurably exchange bodily material! That will be fun. It will be like—is the word sex? Sex, if you want it to be like that. You will have good feels. And always you will be together!"

"Why do you even _look_ like me?" Wendy yelled.

She instantly morphed back into a better, almost perfect copy of Dipper, even down to the birthmark, though it only showed up as a deeper shade of blue. "I can change form once I have a pattern. My body is—I think Dipper's word would be a gel. I touched your skins, absorbed what you call DNA? Yes, DNA. It gives me the pattern. Only there is not yet much of my substance, so I am small. But we will all grow! When you are absorbed."

Wendy heard Dipper snarling and groaning. He must have been trying to get free. The jelly girl did a rapid ooze back up the slope. Wendy heard it telling Dipper, "Lie still! You can't escape!"

With rage flooding her with adrenaline, Wendy looked for something she could reach. The picnic basket was handy, and she opened it, tossing the folded clothes aside—but how to use cooling coffee, apples, salt and pepper, and sandwiches against the tentacle that had seized hold of her?

She rummaged and opened the cutlery compartment. Spoons, forks, and dull butter knives, too dull to cut anything. She swore a little. She had thoughtlessly tossed the only sharp knife into the boat after cutting the rope. But maybe—a fork—

She grabbed one. They were inexpensive metal, and with almost no effort, she bent the head of the fork, forming it into a hook. Then, stretching toward the backpack, she snagged a strap with the fork and hauled it six inches closer to her. Then she could grasp the pack. She opened it and found inside—yes!

She had not brought her axe, but Dipper had packed her camp hatchet. It could chop kindling and small sticks of firewood, but not a tree. Most important, it was Wendy's—which meant it was something she kept razor-sharp. She stretched the tentacle as far as it would go and reached out, raising the hatchet— _HUH_!

The blade chopped the thing in two. The embedded end thrashed and spurted water or at least a colorless liquid. In the shock, the severed tip let go its grip, and she kicked it down the slope. It wriggled, dripped a little runny blue liquid, and then began to creep back up the slope, slowly, blindly, like a worm. The remainder of the tentacle had recoiled beneath the sand.

She could hear Dipper struggling. Brandishing the hatchet, Wendy went up the sloping beach, came around the boulders, and saw Dipper stretched out on a bed of moss. He saw her, too, and said, "Leave me—just get away!"

Tendrils of the stuff held him down, as if he were Gulliver stitched to the earth by Lilliputians. The jelly girl was on her knees beside him, one gooey hand on his chest, pressing down. She snapped her head back, melted into a glob, and then flowed over Dipper—Wendy saw he was naked, his trunks lying crumpled at his feet—and the jelly-thing grew legs again and rushed toward Wendy.

She swung the hatchet. The jelly didn't seem to mind it—the head of the hatchet passed right through it. Wendy had to retreat. The blobby thing, not bothering to look human from the hips up, surged one way and another, seemingly trying to get behind her. Wendy backed against the cave wall.

Something touched her foot—the fourteen-inch-long piece of tentacle she had sliced off. She kicked convulsively, sending it spinning into the white water at the cave opening.

The blob formed itself into that half-sized replica of Wendy. "You killed it!" the thing said accusingly. "It can't stand the sunlight! You killed it!"

"Give me a chance and I'll see what I can do with you!" Wendy promised.

The whispery voice cajoled: "Just let me touch you. I'll make you calm. Let me—"

Wendy sliced off a hand at the wrist. It fell to the sand and scuttled back to the jelly girl's feet, grabbed her ankle, and was re-absorbed as on the stub of her arm the hand began to grow back. Without raising its whispery voice, the jelly girl said, "You don't understand! You're ours now!"

The other cool, clammy hand briefly brushed Wendy's arm—it was like being crawled over by a slug, and the sensation gave her the shivers—and she pretended a reaction she did not feel. "Why—why am I so—tired?" Wendy asked.

The jelly girl stepped back. "Good. Sleep. Sleep now. Rest."

"Yes," Wendy said, sagging.

"I got one arm loose!" Dipper yelled.

The jelly girl hesitated, but as Wendy sank on her knees to the sand, the creature hurried back up the hill to attend to Dipper. As soon as it was out of sight, Wendy jumped up. The hatchet was no good. What could she use, what could she use? The beach blanket? Throw it over the thing, drag it out of the cave, thrust it into the turmoil of the waterfall, hope it would be exposed to sunlight?

Too chancy. The damn thing might leak through the weave! Wendy shook her head. It was getting difficult to concentrate. Whatever sedative the jelly girl had swept onto her skin was beginning to work. "No!" she told herself fiercely, under her breath. Not until she saved Dipper!

The picnic basket—would it go for human food? Probably not. Nothing in there big enough to contain it. Wendy swayed, wanting more than anything just to lie down and rest—but she couldn't, not yet! Maybe—she reached down and grabbed something, hoping it would work, and then went back to the boulders, walking as softly as she could. The sand muffled her footsteps.

She came around and saw that the jelly girl was struggling with Dipper's right arm. "Put it down, just put it down," she said in her hushed voice.

"Hey! Hands off my boyfriend!" Wendy yelled. The surprised jelly girl surged up, her expression astonished—and Wendy flung a handful of salt right into her face.

It was as if she had fired a shotgun shell full of pellets. Wherever a grain of salt touched the jelly girl, a deep pit immediately opened and water, or oil, or something, oozed out. It didn't scream, but reeled away, dripping from the neck upwards, losing coherence. Wendy flung the last of the salt over her bare back, which instantly pitted, then grabbed Dipper's free wrist. "We're going, man!"

She heaved with all her lumberjack strength, and Dipper yelped as the tendrils and filaments snapped. Then Wendy yanked him to his feet, and they stumbled down the slope. The sand erupted, and another blind tentacle, or the first, having repaired its broken end, thrashed around angrily. They sidestepped, and Dipper grabbed his backpack and snatched up Wendy's hatchet.

"Come on, dude!" Wendy yelled.

They left by way of the guide rope. Dipper glanced back, right into the ravaged face of the jelly girl, not six steps away. No skull, but no features, either—well, melted holes where eyes and nose had been, a gaping maw of a mouth, nothing more. Then Dipper and Wendy were out in the spray of water, they staggered into the hot sunshine, and Wendy grabbed the hatchet and chopped through the guide rope.

"Oh, man," she moaned, dropping the hatchet. "Dipper, I'm all woozy. I don't think I can—"

Dipper, whose back was bleeding, took her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry and stumbled over to the rocky shelf where they had moored the boat. It was still there, still safe.

"Let me—I can—" Wendy got down from his shoulder and staggered but remained on her feet. "Your poor back! Hey, Dip, turn around—get the sun on your back! Lay down on the rock, dude!"

Dipper did, face-down, the warmth of the sun blessedly easing the stinging in his back. "What's happening?"

Wendy knelt beside him. "You had, like, these little blue tendrils stuck all over your back. They're turning black in the sun, drying up and dropping off."

Dipper felt her hands brushing his shoulders, his back, his thighs and calves, even his buttocks. "That's all of them. They crumble like ashes. Got any on your front?"

"Uh, no," Dipper said. "That was from the moss trying to suck me into itself."

"Let's go, dude!"

"Can't." Dipper said. "I left my swim trunks."

Wendy said, "Gonna have to, Dip. I'm gonna pass out any second. You gotta get us back to the beach. Hang on."

She opened the backpack and tossed something to him. "Better than nothing!"

It was her beach cover-up, a green terrycloth robe. Dipper got into it. A shaking Wendy had climbed into the boat and sat holding onto both gunwales, her head drooping. "Hurry, Dip. It put something on my skin to make me sleep. Cast off the lines and—and get in—before I—"

He tossed the hatchet in and then did as Wendy said, pushing the boat out before he clambered into it, soaking the robe. "Good man," Wendy said with a weak smile. She stretched out her hand. "Take it."

He did, and she sent him knowledge of starting and steering the boat—and then he realized she was asleep and dreaming. Dreaming of the two of them. And of love.

* * *

The outboard started on the first yank of the cord, and Dipper sat in the stern and took them out, made the turn, and headed back toward the public beach. He went slowly, though he wanted to get Wendy somewhere safe. He didn't dare risk speeding up and having her fall out of the boat from where she slumped to one side in the bow.

He arrived at the pier, tied up, heaved his backpack and the hatchet up, and then, with great difficulty, lifted the unconscious Wendy. He touched her bare skin—out of necessity—and was aware that she was sleeping—drugged a little, but it was like a normal deep sleep—and he sensed they would have to wait for her to wake naturally.

The trouble was that now without the fuel of adrenaline, he couldn't move her very far. He felt weak himself. The pier, made of wood laced with creosote, reeked in the sun and was burning hot underfoot—he couldn't leave her on that for long. He managed to lift her and stagger onto the sand. That was as far as he could get. Then what?

He had to put her down. They had left the blanket, the picnic basket, his and her clothes, and his trunks in the cave, and he wasn't about to go back for them. Reluctantly, he shed the robe and spread it out on the sand, then moved Wendy onto it. He found what he needed and began to apply it, murmuring, "Wake up, Wendy. Please wake up!"

* * *

She did, after an hour. "Hmnh?" she murmured. "D-Dipper? Where are we?"

He sat sort of huddled not far from her. "On the beach behind the ranger station," Dipper told her. "You've been out since about one. It's a little after two now."

"Whoosh! Oh, man, I am gonna be so sunburned—"

"Uh, I put, I put, you know, sunblock on you. Me, too. It's the strongest one we had—SPF 50."

"Thanks, man—dude, you're naked!"

"Yeah," Dipper said miserably. He was sitting hunched over, his hands crossed in his lap. "I, uh, I didn't pick up my trunks or clothes when we were getting out of the cave. And, uh, all you have is your bikini and the robe you're lying on. Our clothes were in the picnic basket, and I left that in the cave."

"Oh, Dip! Tell me you got my wallet and keys!"

"Yeah, I put our keys and wallets and phones in the backpack when we first got out of the boat."

"Thank God! They OK?"

"Got a little damp, but the phones work, so yeah, I think we're OK there. Oh, yeah, I also remembered to put the hatchet in the boat. It's over on the pier."

Dipper—we got away, man! Why are you so upset?"

"Well—I put my hands, you know—pretty much all over you, putting on the sunscreen. We said we weren't going to get physical, but your top had, uh, slipped, and I had to, uh—I'm sorry. I sort of pulled it back into place."

Wendy sat up and laughed. "Don't be sorry, man! I grant you retroactive permission, since you were saving me from looking like a boiled lobster!"

"What did you do to that thing?" Dipper asked.

"Threw all the salt we had on it. Figured it was like a slug, and it turned out to be. With enough salt, I probably could've melted it to goo. I'm glad it worked. We better get back to the Shack, man, get us some clothes."

"You OK to drive?" Dipper asked.

"Yeah, I think so. Man, we ought to go back into that cave with a flamethrower!"

"I don't want to go back," Dipper said. "Huh. Bill tried to warn me. I stepped on somebody's blue suede shoes, I guess. I'm a dummy."

Wendy got up. "Come on—oh, right, wait." She picked up the robe and shook the sand from it. "Here you go. I won't look."

"Thanks." Dipper wrapped himself in it. "I look stupid."

"Nah, green suits you," Wendy kidded. She hefted the backpack while he went to the pier for her hatchet. "C'mon, let's see if we can sneak you in. If somebody sees you in my beach cover and Mabel hears about it, you'll never live it down."

However, on the way back, Deputy Durland stopped them. "You can't get through this way," he said, leaning in the drivers' window. "Gotta go around town. You fellers heading for Woodstick?"

"We are after a while," Wendy said. "Me and Dip been swimming. We're gonna drive to the Mystery Shack and get ready to go to Woodstick this evening."

"All right," Durland said. "Oh, there's a town ordinance, I think, about driving in bathing suits?"

"OK," Wendy said cheerfully. "Didn't know. Here, I'll take it off." She reached around as if about to unfasten her top.

"No, no," Durland, who was terrified of girls, said hastily as he backed off. "I'll let you off with a warning this time. Uh, just around the center of town to Cold Creek Road, you can get to the Mystery Shack that way."

"As if we didn't know," Dipper said as Wendy made the detour turn.

The Mystery Shack lot was packed with cars taking advantage of Woodstick parking, and tourists milled around in a mob near the tram, obviously waiting for the trip to begin. "Heck with hunting a space," Wendy said. She pulled off the pavement and onto the grass, then around to the little porch. If they were lucky—

Wendy opened the Shack door, then pulled back. "Soos coming!" she said.

Fortunately, he didn't notice them as he turned and went through the dining room and then to the gift shop. They slipped in, and Dipper could hear Soos's booming voice: "OK, dawgs, I'm Mr. Mystery, and I'll be driving you over to Woodstick in the deluxe Mystery Shack Motor Tram. You guys ready to, like, rock?"

Under cover of the cheers, they slipped inside and upstairs.

"I don't have anything you could wear," Dipper apologized.

"It's cool, it's cool. I have spare jeans and a shirt in my locker," Wendy said, sitting on his bed.

Dipper pulled on some undershorts, then took Wendy's robe off. "How's my back look?"

"Like you had the measles. All pink spotted. Lay down on your face, let me take a good look."

He did, feeling her cool hands on his skin. "How is it?" he asked.

"I don't know exactly what that crazy moss thing was doing, but none of it went into your skin that I can see. They're not bumps, just little irritated spots. It's more like, I guess, an octopus's suckers or some deal, just fastened on the surface. I think they were drinking drops of your blood or something. Dude, I'm gonna put some alcohol on, kill any bacteria." She went into the bathroom and then came back. "This is gonna be cold. I hope it doesn't sting."

It didn't, not much, but Dipper squirmed when she pulled his shorts down to his ankles. "It's cool, man," Wendy said. "Think of me as a nurse. Want to make sure I get all the spots. Don't tense up like that! Just relax."

She sent him reassuring vibes as she gave his back a rubdown. The cold alcohol seemed to sooth the pinprick-pains in his skin. Wendy tugged his shorts back into place, patted his butt, and said, "Good boy. You took it like a man. Now get dressed."

He did, with his back to her, put on his running shoes, and then said, "I'll go get your clothes. What about, uh, you know—"

"Underthings? Don't have any. I'll go commando—don't turn so red!—until I can run home and get some."

Dipper went down, opened Wendy's locker, and took out a folded pair of jeans and a hanger with a red plaid shirt.

He took them back to her and started to leave, but she said, "I don't mind, Dip. I won't even tell you not to look, but if it makes you nervous—"

"It isn't nervous that it makes me," he mumbled, and he turned his back. "Uh, what about shoes?"

"Left my boots in the back seat of the car, Dip. And socks, so that's OK. Oh, man, your pine-tree hat!"

"Didn't wear it this morning," he said. "It's over on the table there."

"I'm glad I didn't wear my trapper's hat either," Wendy said. "We have to have something to swap at the end of the summer."

Later, as they drove to the Corduroy house, Dipper said, "I'm sorry for taking you to that place, Wendy."

"You didn't know about the crazy blue moss, Dip. I wonder what's gonna happen to the jelly girl, though?"

"I guess the rest of the moss will turn into a jelly guy, and they'll live happily ever after," Dipper said.

"Until I come back," Wendy said grimly. "With a flamethrower!"


	7. Chapter 7

**Beach Blanket Buff**

 **(August 12-15, 2015)**

* * *

 **7: Clothed for Business**

"Are you sure you feel all right, going to Woodstick after all this mess?" Dipper asked through the open doorway.

Wendy, inside her room and out of his sight, said, "Yeah, man! Sedative or whatever's long worn off. How about you?"

"I feel OK," Dipper said. "For some reason I don't think Jelly Girl dumped any tranquilizer in me. She melted all over me, but that was all. It was kinda icky. She felt really cold and clammy."

"I know, right? She just sort of swiped me with her hand, but she _meant_ to put me to sleep. Guess she thought that if you were plastered down on the moss you couldn't get away. OK, dude, ready for the unveiling? Ta-dah!"

Wendy stepped into the doorway, one arm raised and resting on the door frame, head tilted, a smile on her freckled face. "What do you think?"

She had changed to a halter top and shorts—the clothes covered more than her bikini did, by far—but they were attractive, the top a colorful tie-dye, the shorts her trademark green. And she wore her customary boots. Dipper smiled when he noticed she was wearing her navel ring. She hadn't been when they'd gone to the cave.

"Beautiful," Dipper said. "Guess I'd better dress up, too."

"This year you can finally pull of the V-neck," Wendy said.

"Yeah, if Mabel doesn't tear it off me and rip it up. She hates me in that," Dipper told her. "First because I had like no muscles, and then when I sort of grew some, because my chest hair showed! And she made fun of me for not _having_ chest hair before that. She still has my first one in one of her scrapbooks!"

Wendy pretended to wince in pain. "Ouch! She trim it off, or just—"

Dipper made a pincer gesture with his fingers. "Tweezers. Like, _twang_!"

"Poor Dip. You suffered a lot for that scrapbook! Hey, pull up your shirt and let me see your back again."

"I think it's OK," he said, but he pulled the shirt up to his shoulders and turned to let Wendy inspect his wounds.

"Yeah, the spots are fading fast. No itching or burning or anything?"

"No, feels normal now. I don't think the moss injected anything weird into me. Like you said, they were probably just taking little blood samples. I guess the jelly creatures needed the DNA."

"Dude, hate to break it to you, but that stuff was gonna totally _dissolve_ us." Wendy told him what the Jelly Girl had said to him.

"Yuck!" he said. "The up side for me would be that we'd always be together. The down side would be that you couldn't ever go out in the forest with me and show me all the wonders of Gravity Falls."

She kissed his spine, high up. "That's sweet, Dip." He felt her arms around him, and she pulled him against her and nibbled on his ear. "I guess the jellies are forever confined to their cave. Still—they didn't seem to think we had any say in the matter at all, and that's what makes me mad. I still think we should try to wipe 'em out."

"Let's not think about that until next summer, maybe," Dipper said, enjoying the feeling of her cool hands on his chest, her soft lips on his earlobe. "I don't know—is it dumb of me that I don't want to be too quick to kill things?"

"No. Shows you're a good guy. But you're my guy, and I'm not too fond of Jelly Girl for trying to steal you away. Well, I guess I'm ready. Back to the Shack, you get dressed, and let's go check out the show. Want to drive?"

"Thanks, I'd love to."

Wendy added a serape to her outfit, a light one, as camouflage, she said. "Better if Stan and Dad don't see the ring," she explained. "I'll take it off when we get to the park, if we don't see your grunkle or my dad." When they got to the Shack, Wendy surprised him by taking a taped-up shopping bag from the trunk of her car. "This might not work," she said. "But let's try it. Mabel will just die."

Up in his room—the serape-draped Wendy sitting on his bed and grinning—Dipper opened the bag. "Oh, you don't mean it! Me wear _these_?"

"Heck, yeah! That's the fun of Woodstick, dude! You get to be a little bit wild."

"OK," Dipper said dubiously. He took off his jeans and tugged the trousers on. "Don't look at me!" he said.

"Dude, you're in your boxers! Heck, I've seen Stan in his boxers more times than I can count."

"Well—I guess you and I have seen a lot of each other. I still feel weird, though. These are hard to get on."

It took a great deal of tugging and twisting, but at last he zipped and fastened, then threaded his belt through the loops. "Tight," he commented.

"Yeah, that's kinda the idea. Get the V-neck."

It took a little looking, because it was tucked in the bottom of a drawer, but Dipper found and donned the black shirt, and then added a vest that Wendy handed him. "OK, here I am," he said, spreading his arms. "Leather Dipper!"

And that was true—the vest was black leather decorated with chrome studs, the trousers were tight black leather, and his legs felt like two sausages in too-tight casings.

"You look handsome!" Wendy said. "Hey, Stan left some of his gold chains around, I think. I saw some hanging in the front closet. Let's go see if there's one you could wear."

She found a silver one with turquoise insets, a Navajo sort of look, and draped that around his neck. And then she dug out one of Stan's old ties—his wife Sheila had persuaded him to go a more conservative route, neckwear-wise—that was patterned in swirls of red, gray, and turquoise. She tied it on like a headband.

Wendy temporarily shed the serape and they looked at themselves in the mirror. "Boosh!" Wendy said. "There we go. A stylish edgy couple! Hmm—" She took his hand.

In unison, they said, "Shades!"

Fortunately, the gift shop sold an assortment of sunglasses. They found matching ones, dark green lenses, silver-toned rims. "Are we cool or what?" Dipper asked as they checked the mirror again.

"Smokin'," Wendy said. "Let's go track some totally lit music."

"Right with you, bae," Dipper said.

They sauntered through the gift shop, hardly attracting any attention from the tourists who were dressed in every style from Homeless to Hipster. But Soos admired them. "Dawgs! You clean up nice! Ready to ride over?"

"You know it, Mr. M," Dipper said.

"Ready A.F.!" Wendy said, surprising Dipper. He'd heard Mabel say that, and he'd been mildly shocked when she translated, but . . . he supposed, an abbreviation was technically not a swear.

And Soos didn't take it that way, either. He chuckled. "I know, right? Ready as Freddy! OK, everybody, let's board up the tram! Twenty-minute trip, and I'll do another run in an hour for anybody who wants to come back. All, like, aboard, dawgs!"

* * *

The folk-music part of the afternoon was in full swing. Dipper saw the mobile Mystery Shack doing a brisk business, and he was glad that he and Wendy had the day off. At two, Mabel and Teek came out, and Mabel spotted them at once. She ran over, dragging Teek by the hand. "You guys!"

"'Sup, Sis?" Dipper said, striking a cool pose.

She fell to the ground, rolling and clutching her stomach. "Bwah-ha-ha! Oh Brobro! Leather pants? You can't pull that off! Well, you can, but I'll bet five bucks when you try, it'll rip out your leg hairs! Wendy, you're wearing Dipper's ring! Even with that, you look goochy!"

"Huh?"

"Gucci," Dipper translated. "Means—"

"I know, Dip! Thanks, Mabes. So, you're not dressing up?"

Mabel got up, with some help from Teek. "Oh, I'm dressing up! Fact, Teek and me were just going backstage. One of the acts said we could use their trailer as a dressing room!"

"Not Love God, I hope," Wendy said. She had gone through a rough time the year before when L.G. cast a badly-aimed jealousy spell and it had accidentally hit Wendy instead of Mabel, the original target. She had temporarily gone all crazy _yandere_ and still nursed a grudge.

"He's not here this summer," Mabel said. "Taking some family time, finding himself, that kinda thing. But he sent an announcement to his fans that he will be back!"

"Hi, Teek," Dipper said. "I hope Mabel isn't going to dress you in some ridiculous—ow!"

Mabel had slugged his shoulder. "Shut up! Broseph, you have zero room to talk! I mean, shades, leather vest, leather pants! And that V-neck! And what's that on your head?"

"I think he looks great," Wendy said.

Teek nodded. "Gotta side with Wendy on this one," he said to Mabel. Dipper's pretty—what's that word that Soos always uses? Pretty rad!"

"Yeah, well, he said the same thing about a zombie with flashy lights shooting out of its rib cage," Mabel pointed out. "His threshold of 'rad' is kinda low. But I won't make fun of you, Dip, not if Wendy likes it. That's what counts! Where you guys sitting?"

Dipper checked the tickets. "Um, Box A, 101, 102."

"No way!" Mabel said. "Teek and me got 103, 104—front row! Right over there!" She pointed to two special stands that had been built—new this year—close to the stage, on level ground. Behind them a natural amphitheater, already packed with fans, curved away up the hill.

"See you there, then," Dipper said.

"Come on!" Mabel said to Teek, and they dashed off to the VIP entrance.

"Ah, to be young," Dipper said sarcastically.

Wendy laughed. "Yeah, let's us old fogies get to our seats afore our legs plumb fold up!"

They walked through the ticket gate hand in hand, got the bracelets—the ones for the VIP seats were gold-colored this year—and found their seats. One benefit was that the VIP seats, canted at an angle to the stage, had an awning to keep off the worst of the sun, and since the afternoon temperature wasn't far short of 100, that was a definite advantage.

Dipper wasn't much for folk music—except the tunes he practiced for his guitar lessons—but he enjoyed the first act, two brothers who played acoustic guitars and sang songs they had written: "Rocky Mountain Home," "A Kiss on the Great Divide," "You and Me in Yosemite," and others. They tended to be sort of folk-rocky, and Dipper said to Wendy, "They're kind of catchy. I think I'll buy an .mp3 stick if they've got one for sale."

Wendy shrugged. "Meh, they're OK for what they are. I'm looking forward to some metal tonight. Tambry's supposed to text me soon as she, Robbie, and the Tombstones are backstage. We might want to go say hi to them."

"I've never had a friend who made it in the music biz before," Dipper told her.

"Oh, so Robbie's your friend?" Wendy asked with a smile.

He took her hand and thought to her, — _He's your friend, and what's yours is mine and what's mine is all yours._

 _Aw, dorky but sweet._

— _Seriously, though, since he and Tambry got married, he's mellowed out a lot. And it was nice of him to include "Cold Creek" in the Tombstones' first album._

A five-person group called Great Possumbilities came onstage next, three good-looking girls and two dorky-looking boys. Their music was more hillbilly-oriented. McGucket might have loved it, but it didn't do much for Wendy and Dipper, and when the group left the stage, Wendy took out her phone.

 _Dip, they're here. Tambry says she's told the Security guys to let us into the performers' area if you wanna to see them._

— _Let's go._

As they left the box, they ran into Teek, who looked like a Sev'ral Timez variant—pale-blue fedora, pale-blue shirt-jacket, white slacks and shoes—and Mabel, who showed—

"Lot of skin, Sis!" Dipper said.

"It's a hot day!" Mabel pointed out. She had on a bikini top, one cup yellow, the other one pink, and shorts, with a thin gold chain around her middle, and gladiator sandals—the kind Wendy had worn once, though they hurt her feet in the long run.

"Well, I guess you're safe because Mom's not around," Dipper said. "Anyway, hold our seats if anyone tries to take them. We'll be back in a few minutes."

"Yes, your dorkiness," Mabel said. "Huh. V-neck!" She and Teek went to their seats.

The Security guys—Dipper recognized one from the Skull Fracture downtown—obligingly let them backstage, and Wendy said, "There it is, same old van. Come on."

The Robbie V and the Tombstones van lacked air-conditioning, but they'd set up an oversized fan, and the back doors stood open to catch the air. "Wendy!"

Tambry, her hair a little shorter but still pink-streaked, came running over. She wasn't yet in her stage outfit but wore jeans and a sleeveless lavender top. "You look great, Wen! Hi, Dipper! Aw, Wendy, you're wearing your engagement ring in your belly button!"

"Yep." Wendy touched the thin silver ring that Dipper had given her once when they had to pretend to be a married couple. "Should've taken it off, 'cause Dad's never even seen it, and he'll climb all over my case when he learns I got a piercing, but—special occasion, you know. I'll try to keep out of his way."

"Hey, check it out!" Tambry stretched the neck of her top to bare her right shoulder. She had a new tattoo, a rounded tombstone with ROBBIE V on it.

"Very romantic," Dipper said.

"Celebrating the album," Tambry told them. "You are gonna love it! I mean, those studio engineers make us sound so good! We got a great opening set planned, six whole kick-ass numbers, and we'll do an encore around ten o'clock and play six different ones. Hey, Dipper, 'Cold Creek' is going to be the first one in the first set. Robbie hopes you like it."

"I heard you play it last year," Dipper said. "I thought it sounded great!"

"It's even better now! Come on, you guys. Robbie's over there under the awning."

They found Robbie drinking a—beer, maybe? Hard to tell. It might have been ginger ale. Anyway, he sat at a shaded picnic table and was talking to a guy and a girl in matching blue work shirts and fancy black jeans with lots of metal studs.

"Yeah," he was telling them, "thing is, once you get a recording offer, go for a good agent right off, 'cause the company will straight rip you off if nobody's looking out for your interests. When we agreed to sign, I called some friends and found Jim Tobee right off the bat. He's great, got them to cut us a lot better deal than they first offered. Give me a buzz if you get an offer, and I'll put in a good word for you—oh, hey, bae! Guys, this is Tambry, my old lady. Uh, and our friends Wendy and—Dipper, that you? Uh, Dipper. They're locals. Knew us when. Guys, this is Mavis and Marvin Cooly, they're into light blues."

They said their hellos, and Mavis complimented Dipper's look. "Bet you wish it wasn't so hot today, though," she said.

"I can deal with it," Dipper told her, though in the sun he felt as if the legs of those leather pants were filling up with sweat.

"Yeah, he's a cool dude," Robbie said, generously. "He's a musician, too, amateur, you know, but not too shabby. We're gonna do a number he wrote at seven, catch it if you can." Modestly, he added, "I arranged it and play lead guitar."

Once the blues couple said their goodbyes, Robbie stood up and astonished Dipper. "Come on, guys, group hug! Where's Mabel and Teek?"

"Out front," Dipper said.

"Yeah, well, can we grab a bite to eat with them and you guys at, say, seven-thirty? I want to thank Teek—he introduced us to our producer, you know. I want to, like, dedicate this first album to him."

"Sweet," Wendy said. "He'll like that."

"Yeah, and that way I don't have to cut him in on royalties," Robbie told her. "Ugh! Watch it, Tambry, you hit me with your elbow."

"Did I?" Tambry asked, rolling her eyes.

After a few minutes of conversation, Dipper decided he'd been right and wrong about Robbie. Yes, since his marriage to Tambry, Robbie had matured.

But, under that—

Same old Robbie.


	8. Chapter 8

**Beach Blanket Buff**

 **(August 12-15, 2015)**

* * *

 **8: Metal in My Soul**

When time came for the Tombstones to take the stage, Dipper was feeling considerably less worried and a lot less nauseated. The threat of the moss, fungus, whatever it was, had bothered him all afternoon.

Worst of all were the aftereffects of fear—he had been most scared that the jelly-thing would capture Wendy—and now that he had escaped without any lingering effects, he typically had begun to fret about what _might_ have happened. Mysterious disappearance of local teens. Somebody would discover the boat with Wendy's boots inside. They'd find the rope guideline and follow it to explore the cave . . . and he and Wendy, transformed into jelly monsters, would capture them, and it would turn into a bad horror movie, but with very realistic special effects. . . and worst of all would be if Mabel came inside the cave to meet her doom at the hands of her own brother and his jellied mate-for-life Wendy . . ..

But the worst hadn't happened, he didn't need to feel guilt for something he'd never done, he and Wendy had worked together to get away from the bizarre life form, and now—now here he was with his girlfriend, and nobody was giving them a second look or thinking it odd that Wendy was running around with a guy three years—well, really, a little more than two—younger than herself.

Mabel had finally stopped teasing him, wrapped up in the music and getting snuggly with Teek, the fiercest heat of the day had given way to the warmth of a gorgeous late afternoon, the music ranged from enjoyable to great, and, all in all, Dipper was feeling fantastic. Well, he was feeling OK, which by his standards edged into fantastic.

His ears were still ringing, because Mabel had whooped and yelled and cheered when Sev'ral Timez did its bit, forty minutes of mixed old and new songs. The group mostly wrote its own, and they were all so similar—clone songs, in fact—that they could have been extra-long verses of one extra-long nineties-style boy-group song.

However, they covered a few other songs, and Dipper thought one of the new ones, "White Bread and Water," bore the earmarks of lyrics by their manager, Tad Strange. It was, roughly, for Sev'ral Timez the equivalent of one of those bizarre psychedelic songs the Beatles did there for a while—inexplicable but mesmerizing, though in this case mesmerizing in a calm, extremely boring way.

Anyhow, the guys got a warm reception, played to shrieks of girls, and exited to happy cheers. A short break followed as roadies reset the stage, and then Grunkle Stan himself came out with a microphone. He was dressed in what he considered party style—white loafers and slacks, a bright blue Hawaiian shirt, no eyepatch or fez. Dipper again marveled at how young—well, how much younger—well, at least how heartily middle-aged he looked. Not only had Stan sipped from the Fountain of Youth, but Sheila had been good for him—he had lost a lot of his gut, he bounded out with lots of energy, and he seemed upbeat and excited.

"Hiya, Gravity Falls guys, girls, and guests!" he said in his cheerful, raucous old pitchman's voice. "Is this evening legendary or _what_? OK, you asked for 'em, we got 'em. To start with, I'm thrilled, and you will be too, because comin' out in a minute is a homegrown phenom! The two kids who lead this group were born and raised right here in Gravity Falls! OK, everybody out there from Gravity Falls, give me a 'Hell, yeah!'"

Mabel shouted louder than anybody, though technically she wasn't a native Gravity Faller. Behind and above Stan, two huge video screens came to life. His magnified face grinned from both—a live cam was covering him, Dipper realized, from somewhere way up behind the last seats, but zoomed in for a close-up. "Let's have some real music now! You guys and girls ready for some head bangin'?"

 _Yeahhh!_ It was less a response than a roar, echoing across the valley.

Stan pumped up his volume: "I mean, you want some metal?"

 _YEAHHH!_

" _I can't hardly hear you! Speak up, you guys. Are you ready—for—Robbie V and the Tombstones?"_

 _HELL, YEAHHH!_

Dipper winced. The foot-stomping was like being caught in a thunderstorm. Stan backed up, Robbie and Tambry came running out, Stan passed the mike to Robbie and then vanished behind the curtains. The other guys in the band came out and picked up their instruments and drumsticks.

Still the crowd cheered. When the roar died down just a little, Robbie held the mike up and asked sarcastically, "The fuck you guys _on_? Hey, I want to introduce our keyboardist first. You'll meet everybody later on, but she's first, 'cause I'm proud to say she's my wife—Tambry! You guys, give it up!"

Applause, screams of excitement, wolf-whistles, somebody bellowed, "I love you!"

Tambry took the mike and shaded her eyes, peering out at the audience as she yelled, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, who said that? Who said you loved me?"

A moment of quiet, and then someone halfway up the stands bawled, "I did!"

Tambry smiled and mimed a kiss. "Yeah? That's sweet." And she gave the guy the bird, then yelled, "Let's play 'Cold Creek!'"

Wendy squeezed Dipper's hand.

As Dipper had composed the song—at first as just a succession of guitar chords—it traced the course of Cold Creek, one of the many watercourses in the valley and one that he had explored in his first and second summers in Gravity Falls. Robbie had turned it into a jolting, electric metal tune, keeping the melody and the harmonies, but amping up the pacing and phrasing in his arrangement. The music had a driving force and an evil kind of excitement in his version.

To Dipper's surprise, the screens changed to recorded video—doing what the tune did. The first, relatively soft bit, tinkling sounds growing louder and swifter, reflected in the footage, which began with a spring gushing out of a terraced rockface, the source of the creek. Then as the tempo picked up, the video followed the creek's path, rushing white water, leaping over a rocky bed, bursting with a free kind of power. The rapids came, and a crashing crescendo, and then a breathtaking change of pace, low, moody, slower, gathering power as the creek flowed into a series of pools. Finally, it wailed out as it hit the falls, not a huge waterfall, only about twenty feet, but gorgeous in its v-cleft opening and the white leaping falls as Cold Creek fed into the river—and some solid, heavy chords nailing home the idea that the creek had reached its goal.

People were jumping up and down and screaming. Holding his hand, Wendy sent him a mental message that he couldn't possibly have heard if she'd yelled it— _They like your song, man!_

 _Robbie and Tambry did a great job with it._

— _Shh. Let's see if Robbie's gonna keep up the asshole act._

Robbie was scowling—his trademark expression—but he stepped up to the microphone, now on its stand, and as soon as the crowd had quieted a little, he said, "Guess you liked it, huh? Well, I just want to say that tune was written by my homeboy Dipper Pines—where are you? There you are! Stand up, man! Take a bow, man! Pleasure playing your riffs! And the video was all shot by another Gravity Falls gal, the gorgeous Wendy Corduroy! Right there, folks, next to Dipper. Stand up! Love you, Wen!"

Tambry pretended to be furious and grabbed the mike. "No, you don't, not anymore! He's married to me, everybody! And we'll prove it! Come on, let's do 'Fight or Love!'"

It was a rocking vocal duel between Robbie and Tambry, a mock battle in which they couldn't decide whether they'd rather fight or make love—so why not do both at once? The crowd jammed to the beat, loved the suggestive but innocent lyrics, and if anything, it got a bigger reception than "Cold Creek."

But Dipper was sending Wendy love his own way, through touch telepathy. – _You never told me about doing the video!_

 _I don't tell you everything! Yeah, Robbie already knew he wanted to record that, so just before you guys came for the summer, he gave me an .mp3 and told me what it represented. Then I rented a camera and spent five days out in the woods, tracing the trail of the creek. I sent Robbie about an hour of footage, and the guys at the studio edited it down to the four minutes of the video. It's the official music video of your song, Dip!_

 _-I love it!_

And what more was there to say?

Well, plenty, and they said it, but silently.

* * *

At seven-forty, Dipper, Wendy, Mabel, and Teek slipped away and met Tambry and Robbie backstage. They both looked as if they'd put in a shift in a coal mine—"OK if we go out without changing?" Tambry asked. "We gotta go on again at ten, but a girl's got to eat!"

"Fine with us," Wendy said, hugging her. "Tambry, you're amazing!"

"Robbie's the glue that holds us together," Tambry said, with a loving look at her husband, who had his arm over Teek's shoulder, promising him a tour of the LA recording studio any time he wanted to come down.

"So, where you guys want to eat? The Club?" Mabel asked.

Tambry made a face. "Too fancy! We've been down in California for weeks, on and off. Honest truth, I miss Yumberjack's!"

That decided, they adjourned to Yumberjack's, a marginally upscale burger joint, really. Just getting there took some time, though it was only about a twenty-minute walk—people kept stopping Robbie and Tambry for autographs or to ask where they could buy the .mp3 album he had plugged during their set.

Robbie whipped out business cards with the info, but said, "If you really want 'em tonight, check out the Mystery Shack Mobile. They got about a hundred of them, but they'll sell out fast!"

Wendy said, "Better hurry, they close at eight-thirty!"

Away from the amphitheater they made better time, and when they walked in Yumberjack's, few people paid them any special attention. These diners were the folk-music fans who didn't know from metal. "It's on me tonight," Robbie announced.

Mabel grinned. "You just signed your wallet's death warrant!"

But she held back—just two burgers, and Teek ate half of one of those. Wendy and Dipper split one, as they normally did. Robbie said, "Seriously, T.K., thanks for giving the producer that demo memory stick. That opened the door for us, man!"

"Hey," Teek said, "you're welcome! You guys deserve it."

"So," Tambry asked Wendy, "what did _you_ guys do all day?"

"Eh," Wendy said, "Dipper and me toured around the Valley. I showed Dipper the Crystal Cave and the geysers and like that. And we had a picnic."

"Whoa, exciting," Robbie mocked.

"I bet it was, 'cause they fooled around, too!" Mabel said through a mouthful of burger.

Robbie smiled and reached for Tambry's hand. "You two be careful," he said. And then, with a warm smile at Dipper, he said, "Gotta say it. You are one lucky guy, man."

"I know it," Dipper said.

Huh. Maybe Robbie had changed more than he'd thought.

But for once, Dipper agreed with him a hundred per cent.

Touching Wendy's hand, he thought to her, — _I AM a lucky guy, Magic Girl._

 _And I'm a lucky girl, Big Dipper._

But aloud, Wendy said to Robbie, "OK, I liked the editing job on the video footage, but what's my cut of the income from the music video gonna be? Flat fee or royalty? And don't try to stiff me—Stanley Pines is my business manager!"

Robbie choked on his Yumburger Supreme.

Fortunately, Tambry knew the Heimlich.


	9. Chapter 9

**Beach Blanket Buff**

 **By William Easley**

 **(August 12-15, 2015)**

* * *

 **9: Sure Are a Lot of Stars**

Wendy and Dipper hung in for the Tombstones' second set—by then the place was crowded to standing room only, because word got around, man, and the metalheads were eager to see and hear this hot group.

In front of an audience pressed shoulder to shoulder, stomping to the beat and cheering, Robbie and Tambry played and sang hard, their faces shining with sweat, but they rocked the place—the fans screamed until they did three encore tunes before finally letting them go. When they left the stage, they didn't run off as they had before, but strutted off, and when Robbie dipped and kissed Tambry hard, well, if the amphitheater had a roof, the crowd would have raised it.

Soos had come in at the beginning of their set, after dropping off a tramload of customers, and he sauntered over to the VIP stands long enough to say, "They bought us out of the _Robbie V and the Tombstones METAL_ usb's, dawgs! We took two hundred on consignment, and they are _gone_!"

And just as Soos said that, the Tombstones had come out, and the pandemonium began with welcoming shouts of encouragement.

"Great!" Dipper yelled, but close as he was, Soos cupped his ear and shook his head. Robbie and Tambry had plunged right into "Love/Hate, Suck/Great," another Robbie original, and the music was loud, their shouted lyrics louder. Dipper made an OK sign with thumb and forefinger, and Soos, wincing a little at the volume, waved and left.

Next to Wendy, Mabel and Teek seemed to be smooching more than listening, and when the Tombstones made it offstage after the final encore, Wendy sent Dipper a mental message: _Let's go. Don't want to hang around for the rest of the noise!_

— _Noise? I thought you liked it._

 _Yeah, well, I like milkshakes too, but I get sick after about three. C'mon, walk me to the Shack._

They pushed their way through the crowd, still chanting "Tombstones!" as the next group, _Medical Waste Sharps_ , stood on stage looking a little stunned, as if they had just realized they had an impossible act to follow.

Dipper and Wendy finally got through the press of bodies and approached the entrance, waving at Nate, waving at Thompson and his girl Vanilla, and then breaking out past the Security team and into the open. "Whoosh!" Wendy said. "My dad's gonna hang here until sometime tomorrow. He's taking Sev'ral Timez to the Skull Fracture for an all-night poker game."

Dipper did a double-take at that news. "Those guys will lose their shirts!"

Wendy put her arm through his. "Nah, Dad's text said that in honor of their guests, tonight they're playing for matchsticks."

"Great," Dipper said. "Then they'll set fire to their RV."

"Probably," Wendy agreed, laughing. The five guys in Sev'ral Timez tried hard, but they were slow to become domesticated. Greggy C. still occasionally tried to eat such things as soap and paper clips, and two of the others could never quite get the hang of when the toilet lid should be open or closed. It took guts to be a roadie with Sev'ral Timez. Guts and gallons of Piney-Fresh Bathroom Cleanser.

Once away from the amphitheater, Dipper and Wendy walked toward town, crossed the highway where Sheriff Blubs was directing traffic (he'd only caused two fender-benders, a record low for him), and headed up the hill toward the Shack. They arrived about eleven-fifteen, under a clear, dark sky and stood on the back porch. "Sleepy?" Wendy asked.

Dipper shook his head. "Not really. Too much happened today. I have to process it."

She had her arm around him. "Yeah, I'd like to think through some things, too. Let's do it together. You got a beach blanket?"

Dipper glanced at her. "Uhh—yeah, I think there's a couple on the top shelf of the linen closet."

"Let's see."

Dipper unlocked the door, and they entered the house quietly. Soos was already asleep, because his heroic snoring echoed through the whole downstairs, and no one else seemed to be awake, either. Mabel was still at the concert, the babies were probably zonked out, Abuelita and Melody were getting their rest after a hard day.

"Shh," Wendy cautioned, and she tiptoed into the laundry room, opened the tall door of the linen closet, and stretched way up. "Score!" she whispered. "Good one, nice and thick."

From the medicine cabinet, Dipper got some insect repellent—August was the high season for the soothsquitoes, mutant mosquitoes that bit in patterns forming words that offered prophetic advice, but usually by means of dyslexic or Spoonerized messages like "BEWARB!" or "CILL WIPHER IS BATCHING."

They applied the sharp-smelling repellent and then strolled out to the bonfire glade under the light of brilliant stars. Though they were a long way from the amphitheater, they still could hear the distant music and could see the far-off yellow glow from the stage lights.

The summer grass on the far side of the trail from the clearing had grown lush and thick, and they spread the blanket and lay back, side by side, stargazing. To Dipper it felt almost as though they lay on a padded mattress. He pointed out a few stars and one planet: Saturn was bright but low, nearly behind the bluffs. The Big Dipper shone sharp and clear. The other stars shone radiantly. They could even see the filmy streaks of the Milky Way.

"They're never this bright at home," Dipper said softly. "Stars, I mean. The artificial light around San Francisco and Oakland washes out the night sky."

Wendy's mind was on other things. "It's going to be a long nine months, Dipper. I'm going to miss you so much it'll hurt."

He reached for her hand and squeezed it. "You'll keep busy in the Shack, and finishing up your last couple of high school classes, and going to college extension courses in the evenings. It won't be all that long. You've got all that stuff to occupy you."

Wendy laughed. "Yeah, not to mention working in the Shack on weekends and keeping house for my dad and my sloppy brothers. But every time I get a chance stop and settle down to rest—I'll be thinking of you."

"We've still got two weeks," Dipper said. "Hey, Wendy? Thanks so much for today. Taking me around to all those places—it was like you're giving me a present of Gravity Falls, giving me everything in it. God, I love this place! Two little weeks. Let's make the most of what we have left until September."

"Oh, yeah," she said. "It's what comes after September that's got me low."

Dipper sighed too. "Maybe we won't have to wait until June. I hope we can get together over the year. Don't know about Christmas."

Wendy looped his arm over her head and rested her neck on it. "Soos says he and Melody are going to take two weeks off between Christmas and some time in January to vacation in Mexico when Abuelita flies down. Soos sort of wants to connect with his roots, I guess, and his great-aunts and great-uncle want to see the babies and meet Melody and all. I may sign on as the on-site Shack caretaker for the couple of weeks they're away, just to get out of my house for a little while. But, man! Knocking around this place, and it all closed up and empty, with nobody to talk to, and you down in California—I don't know how I'm gonna stand it."

"Well," Dipper said, "it's possible that I can get Soos to ask Dad if I could come up to help take care of the Shack for part of those two weeks. Christmas is on a Friday, and we don't start school again until the fourth of January."

"Be sweet if you and Mabel could come up," Wendy said. "Much of a chance?"

Dipper said slowly, "Maybe. I think if we have Christmas day at home with Stan and Ford, that'll satisfy Mom. But she might not let Mabel and me come up, especially with the Ramirezes gone. See, I know Ford and Lorena are going from our house on to Hawaii right after they spend Christmas with us, so they won't be here, and Stan and Sheila are talking about taking a trip to Europe at the same time. I think Stan wants to hit Monte Carlo or something."

Wendy sighed. "You mean there wouldn't be any adult chaperones here," she said. "And your mom might not like it if she thought I'd be staying here alone with you guys. Yeah, sounds dicey."

"Maybe you could come down to Piedmont, though," Dipper suggested. He raised up on his elbow. "Yeah! Your dad and brothers will be off at Apocalypse camp, right?"

"For two weeks at least, I'm sure, probably beginning on Christmas Eve. He's mad because they missed it this past year when he busted his leg. He won't strike out twice in a row!"

"And _you_ don't have to do the training any longer, right?"

"I graduated!" she said. "At the point where I could do everything better'n Dad, he cut me loose. I dunno if I could just take off for California, though. Maybe. I could drive down, and I could dip into my savings, I guess, but it'd be awfully pushy of me to come to visit you. I'm not family."

He settled back on one elbow and leaned over to kiss her. "You're close enough. Dad would lobby for you. Up until Christmas is over, I don't think we'd have enough room, though, even in the new house. I mean, Stan and Sheila will have the guest room, Ford and Lorena probably will take mine, and I'll sack out down in the basement library—the loveseat down there unfolds into a single bed. But maybe you could double up with Mabel. Or, even better, there wouldn't be a problem if we could think up a reason for you to visit starting the day after Christmas . . .."

An owl hooted, and a distant dog barked as though complaining about the noise. Wendy said thoughtfully, "Possibly, but it still strikes me as pushy. Maybe I wouldn't even have to stay in the house, though. When I drove down, I noticed a Rusty Roof motel not too far from where you live. That should be a pretty cheap place to say."

"It's still there," Dipper said. "But it'd be crummy, I think. I've never been in it, but from the outside it looks like a dump."

"Must be someplace I could stay," she said. "I'll explore that on the internet. Still, I can't say yes, you know, not this far in advance, but if we could work it, we'd at least get to see each other."

"Stan wanted us all to come up for Thanksgiving again, too," Dipper said. "He wanted to host in the new house—but your dad got behind schedule after he was injured—I'm not blaming him—"

"I know you're not," Wendy assured him. "He feels terrible about it, 'cause he's gotta be the manly man, you know."

"Manly Mannington," Dipper murmured.

"Huh?"

He chuckled. "Skip it. Just something Mabel used to say."

"Anyway, dude, he had a supplier go bankrupt on him, and that's a legal tangle, and now he's not gonna be able to get the houses finished until next spring. But, hey, I'm sure that Fiddleford would love to host Thanksgiving again. Or what's wrong with having it in the Shack?"

"Uh—Mom's kind of prejudiced," Dipper said. "All those years when she thought Stan was Ford, she also thought the Mystery Shack was a research center and science museum."

"I'll have a talk with Stan," Wendy said. "We ought to be able to work _something_ out. It wouldn't be fair for your folks to put on a big Thanksgiving feast at their house and then the next month a big family Christmas."

"I'll try to talk Dad and Grunkle Stan into something," Dipper promised. "Uh—this is probably dumb, but you know, you could come down to California during winter break and say it's because you're scoping out colleges. If it's after Christmas, I can get Dad to offer you the guest room, or if you feel funny about that, I could give you the money to pay for a better hotel. I'd kinda worry about you being on your own at the Rusty Roof."

"We'll think about it," Wendy said, rolling onto her side. "We'll text and face-time and all. We ought to be able to figure out some way to get together before next freaking June! You _will_ be coming back in June, right?"

"Oh, yeah! Already got Dad and Mom to agree," Dipper said happily. "They love being able to travel in the summers. Mom's always wanted to tour Eastern Canada. Don't know why. She wants to go to Prince Edward Island and see the house where Anne of Green Gables supposedly lived and all. I think Dad's got like a month of accumulated vacation, so that's their plan."

They snuggled close together, still star-gazing. "We had a real rocky summer," Wendy said. "I mean, large parts of it seriously sucked, man. Hope next year will be all, like, rainbows and puppies. I guess while you're away, you'll be busy writing another book?"

"Yes. I did a proposal for the third book, and Brangwen accepted it and the editor gave me the go-ahead. Uh—it'll be about a haunted convenience store, and Willow will have a major part in it. I can finally put in all the stuff about Tripper crushing on her that I had to leave out of the first two. And a big side plot will be about a teen psychic, only I'm changing it from a ten-year-old boy to a thirteen-year-old semi-psychotic girl and _she's_ crushing on Tripper, and Alexa will have to get her twin out of trouble with her. Otherwise, the psychic girl, oh, I'm calling her Gilead right now, is a take on Gideon, but I'll have to disguise that carefully. I mean, Gideon's cleaned up his act. Wouldn't be fair to him—sorry, I'm as bad as Ford when I get off on a tangent!"

"No, that's fine," Wendy said. "I asked. Got a title?"

" _Psyched and Spooked_ ," Dipper said. "I'm not crazy about it. It may change."

"I get to read it?"

"I _need_ you to read it," Dipper told her. "I want to send you each chapter as I finish a draft. But please don't tell me I can't describe Willow as beautiful, because Alexis, I mean Tripper, I haven't revealed his real name yet, thinks she's the most gorgeous girl in the world. Also the coolest."

Wendy squeezed his hand. "I won't stop you. But make her _real_ , Dip." She took a deep breath. "Make her lazy and kind of a smart-ass. Make her mischievous and a rule-breaking hell-raiser. Make her irresponsible and secretly racked up because of her family life with a bunch of crazy, loud, sloppy guys. And make her a little distant with Tripper, 'cause at that point in her life, she flat doesn't understand what a good guy he is."

"You're way too hard on yourself," Dipper told her. "But yeah. In this book, he'll crush on her, but she wants to be just friends. Little bit of heartache for Alexis there."

"Course of true love never did run smooth," Wendy said. "Straight out of my college English class, man! Shakespeare!"

" _Midsummer Night's Dream,"_ Dipper said. "You know, if you wanted to act, you'd make a great Helena."

"Nah, leave the stage to Robbie and Tambry. I'd pee my pants if I had to get up in front of people and try to act."

"Well, some people might pay to see—ow! No tickling! No tickling!"

Wendy finally let him go, and they kissed for a while. The wind murmured up in the treetops. "Getting cooler," Dipper observed. "Want to go in?"

"Not just yet," Wendy murmured. "Few more minutes. We had such a hell of a day, didn't we? Yeah, the night's getting cool, but tell you what—let's just lay here for a little while and warm each other up."

"That's the best idea I've heard in a long time," Dipper whispered to her.

And so—under the stars, with nary a Gnome watching and the land around them at peace—they warmed each other up.

* * *

 _The End_


End file.
